Customer Appreciation Day? I'm THERE!

I figured I better blog about last Saturday before this Saturday. This Saturday is trick-or-treating day. If you live outside of Utah you may be scratching your head and counting your fingers (which is better than scratching your fingers and counting your heads) because Saturday is the 30th, not the 31st. I will admit, I'm glad to switch things up and leave Sunday as a day of rest (I just laughed. Day of REST? Hopefully one day I will believe in that phrase! ha ha!).

So....back to last Saturday.

Snowbird was having a Customer Appreciation Day. All you need to do is bring a can of food for the food bank, and you get to ride the tram for free. Sam and I enjoyed the tram ride so much on our anniversary we decided to head back with our whole crew so they could all experience it.

It was great fun! We went with our friends, the Colasurdo's. As we were driving up the canyon, the weather was very sketchy. Lots of swing-low-sweet-chariot clouds. It was cold and we were expecting snow, especially in the higher elevations. Did I mention the top of the mountain is 11,000 feet?

I snapped a ton of pictures while Sam was driving because the red foliage was mostly gone from the trees, but the bright yellow leaves were screaming at me from between the dark green evergreens. So purdy.

Side note, a few weeks ago I emailed Sam's dad in New York because I needed to know his parent's names for a family tree project Carson was working on in scouts. I've never met Sam's dad before and in the email I asked him about the fall colors on his New York trees. He emailed me back and said he'd take some pictures for us. I was pleasantly surprised when we received a package from him in the mail, full of New York fall colors! They were beautiful! Thanks Sid! Here's some Utah colors for you.




On the Tram. Parker was so excited. Carson was so scared. Those two boys are so different in so many ways, yet they are great friends. I love it because it keeps life interesting.


Speaking of Parker...um....I got nothin'.


Attempt at a family picture. There's Parker being difficult again, punk kid. There was snow and it was cold, but it was free!


I think this is why my butt was all wet with melted snow. Busted!


Greatest picture of Sam. Ever.


Knit gloves. Who invented those things? How are you supposed to throw a decent snowball when the snow just sticks to your hand? I think it's a big conspiracy. Don't EVEN get me started on trying to get little fingers in each of the finger tubes....


Holla Mindy and Pete! You guys are radical, gnarley, and bodacious friends.


Okay you too Cameron, you rock.


Oh that's where Parker gets his random-ness. This blog answers all sorts of my previously unanswered questions. That's not even my kid. I think Sam just picked her up at the top of the mountain. Okay kidding about that last part. This would be Cameron's future bride. It's already arranged. You didn't think that sort of thing happened anymore? Consider yourself corrected.


Can't wait for the next "Customer Appreciation Day". If the weather is nice, maybe we should hike down the mountain instead of riding the tram down. Oh wait, nevermind. My neighbor did that and the tips of his toes turned blue with bruises because his toes kept crunching into his shoes because the trail is so steep. No thank you, the tram ride down is way too pleasant. I'm good!

Tomorrow is the Halloween parade at school. Can't wait to see Bumblebee Parker and Waddling Penguin Carson! Cameron is going to be a frog. I'm already training him to say "Trick or Treat! Riiiibbbiittttt!"

FAIL

Sam is at a scout camp tonight. The kids were watching a movie so I thought I'd peruse some "Fail" websites. These are the ones that actually made me chuckle out in the open, not just internally. The first one Sam had emailed to me like a month ago and I thought it was hysterical!

The last one is only funny because it's so true/common. I honestly cannot believe some of the stuff people write on Facebook. Remember who your FB friends are: co-workers, long-time friends, recent acquaintances, neighbors, relatives.... You can quickly weave a tangled web with some of the status updates if you aren't careful.

Oh man, I don't know how to make these small enough so you can see the whole status update. This one reads: My mom thinks "lol" means "lots of love" She texted me: "your Grandma has just died. LOL"



This one reads: If you type your Facebook password in a comment box it comes up as Stars!!! **********hahaaaa!! Awesome! Look at the last comment, so funny!



This one reads: Does not want to work today....


Lucky for me, I love my job. I also love my "office" since it's at home so I have never been tempted to write something as stupid as that person did! :)

Speaking of ridiculous costumes (what??)....

Okay, I've come to peace with it so I can show you what Carson chose as his costume:




This penguin is cute, but it's something a toddler should wear...not a 10 year old boy! I wanted him to be a super hero, a skeleton, or even Mario/Luigi but he would NOT budge. I had to be careful with my words so I said "Carson, other kids your age will probably wear something a little scarier. I just don't want you to feel bad if other kids sort of, you know....laugh.". He said "MOM! Penguins can be super scary! When they get mad they do THIS!" and then he proceeded to put his hands on his hips (remember, we are at a Halloween Spirit store with lots of scary things AND scary people around us) and lunge forward with his head. Sort of like a chicken pecking for corn on the ground....but a chicken on steroids. Kind of like how mad a chicken would be if you insulted his mama. It took every bit of will-power I possessed not to laugh out loud. I asked him about 3 more times if he was "absolutely sure he wanted to be a penguin" and then we purchased that blasted piece of felt-turned-penguin and exited the place.

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention one thing: He wanted a baby blue penguin!!! I finally put my foot down and made him get the traditional black/white penguin. I just have to say....nobody prepared me for times like this when I started having kids. When will the insanity end?

October Odds'N'Ends

I lurve this time of year. I honestly can't think of any reason why somebody wouldn't love October! The weather is PERFECT, Halloween is around the corner, candy is on sale, and orange is acceptable to wear! Orange is my favorite color so I pretty much wear it whenever I feel like it, but in October it's cool to wear orange! ha ha!

OH yah, plus my mums are in full bloom. I seriously love mums, they are not just for funerals anymore!

Because Fern is so crafty, I thought I'd share her latest creations with you:


Aren't they ghoulishly terrific? Finger molds, different colors of chocolate, and big ol' pretzels (or as Parker calls them "pencils"). I loved these!

You know what else I love? The pumpkins Fern painted for my boys this year!

Carson wanted a spider, oh it's so creepy!!:


Parker wanted "Little Mac" from Ben 10 Ultimate Alien. Seriously, this character is not a main character, he appears quickly and goes away. I was lucky we found a picture on the internet of him! Parker could not be swayed though, and he is completely satisfied by his pumpkin results!


Cameron wanted "Max and Ruby", which is the cutest cartoon for kids, in my opinion! He loves it. He just kept pointing to each bunny and saying "Max!"...."Ruby!"...


In other news....
Don't tell Parker that he did a great job making the sun, because he'll glare at you and say "It's not the sun!!! It's a lion!!!"


Another thing. Potty Talk jars do NOT work in my house. I am constantly telling Parker to quit with the potty talk, he loves it. So, on his own, Carson made a "potty talk jar". Every time you say something ridiculous like "butt, weiner, poo, pee...." you have to put $.5 in the jar. The ink on the label hadn't even had a chance to dry when Parker ran downstairs, grabbed all his nickels, and came upstairs saying every potty talk word he could think of as he dropped nickel after nickel into the jar. *****sigh****


Oh hey, remember that big tree that fell down in my yard awhile ago? It left some crazy roots to boot. After breaking our neighbor's jeep, we decided to rent the stump grinder (or as my dad called it, the grump stinder). It was loud and messy, but it got the job done! We had a stump in our front yard as well because we had cut down a tree this past spring. We definitely got our money's worth from the rental!




Hey look, we got some grass where the huge gaping hole used to be! Here's hoping the roots stick and this patch blends in come springtime!


I took Carson to the Halloween Spirit store to find him a costume (because I can't sew and don't have the fight in me for creating a costume). You will NEVER guess what he chose. OH my, I hope the kids don't laugh at him..... I tried to get him to be something awesome like a skeleton but his mind was made up.... More on that later.

Pumpkin Patch 2010

It's just not Halloween season if you haven't been to the pumpkin patch! I look forward to this adventure every year. I think Sam just tolerates it. He's a really good sport!! Thanks buddy!

Just for kicks, here are my pumpkin patch postings from previous years! For some reason I don't have pictures from last year's pumpkin patch visit but I found pictures of the pumpkins Fern painted. So fun!

2006
2007
2008
2009

This year we switched things up and went to a different pumpkin patch. It was more crowded, but so fun because they had free tractor/hay rides and a little corn maze. Plus they had funky pumpkins that were white, red, and regular orange.

I'm going to go out on a limb and say Cameron had the best time at the patch. It was so much fun watching him try to pick up every pumpkin he found. He's crazy funny.


He also tried to move the wheel-barrow. I couldn't even hardly move it! Props for trying though!


I think he surprised himself by picking up this extra large pumpkin! Well, maybe large to him...


This patch also had tons of old tractors and trucks for photo ops. It's pretty impossible to get all my kids to smile at the same time. That's okay, I like the funny faces better anyway!


See what I mean??


Parker is obsessed with sticking out his butt or talking about butts or anything to do with butts in general.


It was a very fun evening! A big thanks to Laura for telling me where the pumpkin patch was. I gave Fern 3 pumpkins tonight so she could work her magic in painting them! We gave her some obscure requests...Parker wanted a character from "Ben 10 Ultimate Alien" that was only on one show, for about 10 seconds total! He insisted on it so I shrugged my shoulders and said "good luck Fern!".

Happy Trails everyone!!

10-10-10, I Have A 10 Year Old

Carson turned 10 yesterday. It's kind of weird to think that my first born is already 10, but I am not at all sad about it. The older he gets, the more I learn to appreciate his unique personality and the young man he is becoming.

Carson is such a joy to be around. I was thinking about this the other day....he is NEVER moody. He is ALWAYS happy. If I get after him for doing (or not doing) something, he doesn't hold a grudge. If one of his brothers needs something, he jumps to help without me asking. When I remind him he has chores to be done, he immediately stops whatever he is doing and heads off to finish the task at hand. I love taking him to the grocery store with me because he's an excellent grocery cart driver and he's fun to hang out with. Lately I've been suprised at his comedic timing, he genuinely makes me laugh and not just because he's being "a cute little kid".

And guess what else? He still thinks Mom is cool and fun to hang out with! I know this will end one day so I'm not taking it for granted at all!

For his birthday, we told him he could invite two friends to go to the Aquarium. It was a blast! I haven't been there since the penguins arrived, they were crazy hyper and so much fun to watch! Not surprisingly, Carson spent 80% of the time at the "Bio-Facts Station" learning about tiny sea creatures and touching them. I kept trying to get the kids to touch the Sting Ray's in the huge tank behind them, but they were learning cool stuff like one of the crabs has blue blood. The employee who works at this station should earn "Employee of the Month" because he patiently sat there and answered/entertained all the questions these 9 and 10 year olds fired at him for close to an hour. I just kept laughing and walking back to the penguin tank! Did I mention how cool they were?




It was pretty interesting, as you can see by the look on Cameron's face.


One of the coolest fish: I think it was called four-eyed fish...their eyes sat on the surface of the water. Sam took this obscure picture and I heart it!


Despite Parker having a complete melt-down halfway through the Aquarium (it's hard to understand why Carson was getting all the attention), the trip was a complete success. Cameron must have mentioned "Nemo" at least 684 times while we were there.

Afterwards, we headed back to our house and had pizza and brownies and ice cream. That's right, we loaded the kids up on calories, just so they could then burn them by running through our house afterwards with an awesome game of tag. It was seriously so much fun! I was laughing at how hard they were laughing. I'm telling you, this getting older business suits me just fine!






Happy Birthday Carson, you are now in the Webelos program for scouts. Say a little prayer for me that I can figure out the Webelos book! Shoot, that reminds me, I better go buy one tomorrow!

Speaking of buying things...
Remember our huge tree that blew over in the last windstorm? Well, everything has been cleaned up, except the gaping hole where the tree used to be and about a thousand roots. One root in particular is giving us lots of fits. It's huge, snakes its way on the surface of the ground, and is such a pain to mow the grass around it. We thought if we tied a rope and/or chain around it and had somebody use a truck or something, we could just rip it right out.

Sam called our neighbor, Andrew, and asked if he could help. He has a Jeep with an 8,000 pound winch on the front. Long story short, the rope was in place, the Jeep was positioned, the winch began to perform like it was supposed to. The root started to shudder, shake, and lift when suddenly, **POP**! Uh-oh, that sound came from the Jeep. We look over to Andrew, who looked under the Jeep and discovered a broken axel! Ahhhh, dang (said in the best "Larry the Cable Guy" voice). That stupid root was so strong that it was pulling the Jeep forward, so Andrew put it in Reverse and applied the brakes. At that point, something had to give. The root, or the axel. I'm sad to say the root won the fight and now I need to buy Andrew a new axel. I know there's a religious lesson I can learn here...something about having strong roots, but I'm not in the mood to formulate it right now!

So, next Saturday we are renting a stump grinder and grinding the stupid root into the ground. That'll show 'em!

Never A Dull Moment

To recap a few things from my last posting:
The day I brought the food storage in the house and stacked it on the table, Parker carried every bit of it downstairs to the laundry room. He couldn't carry an entire case of canned goods, so he took the cans down, two at a time! Why would he do such a nice thing? Because I told him I'd pay him a dollar! Bribery, it's a beautiful thing!!!

The chairs/kids have not fallen off the ledge in the kitchen because for now, the kids eat at the counter and not the table. We need to paint the kitchen railing, it's next on our "project" list. :) Sam is almost done hanging and painting the crown molding, it looks so good!

That picture Parker drew? It's Heavenly Father, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Ghost (emphasis on the Holy Ghost). He was so excited to show me how well he drew it (upper left corner). Gotta love Parker!

Here are pictures of my food storage shelves:



Some items I stock, but not limited to:
ketchup, cake mixes, brownie mixes, peanut butter, tomato soup, cream of chicken/cream of mushroom soup, all kinds of pasta, green chiles, black beans, refried beans, chicken broth, BBQ sauce, sliced peaches, brown sugar, powdered sugar, chocolate chips, spaghettios, canned chicken, lots of different seasoning packets, honey, canned tomato products, Prego, oil, corn syrup, water, cereal, oatmeal, home canned apple sauce and apple pie filling, TP, Paper towels......and lots of other miscellaneous stuff!

I've been shopping the sales like crazy to get everything stocked up, but even with all the work I've done on it over the past few weeks I still feel like I have a long ways to go. Baby steps, baby steps, baby steps.

What do you do when you have lots of stale marshmallows? We like to shoot them from cool sling shots that Aunt Fern gave the boys!


Superman pajamas are optional.


Gosh I have a lot to say about Parker in this post. That's okay because he's a middle child and could use the attention, right?

So, the other day Carson, Parker, and I were watching "America's Funniest Videos". There was a montage of babies tasting something sour for the first time. It was Hu-Stare-Ic-All! Carson and I were laughing our guts out. Parker just glared at us and finally ran downstairs and into his bed. I went downstairs to ask him what was wrong. He was crying and said "It's not FAIR that you and Carson get to laugh and I don't!!!" Oh my word, it was so irrational I couldn't help but laugh! Of course laughing just made it worse. The only way I could get Parker to stop crying was to get a 5-lb weight and hide it under Carson's pillow. I said "Look Parker, when Carson comes to bed he will be so surprised!" That did the trick. Parker laughed. Gladly, Carson didn't hit his head too hard when he went to bed that night! I could hear Parker giggling about it from upstairs. All is well with the world!

Tonight we decided to decorate for Halloween. Everything was going smoothly until Parker fell off the stairs that lead to the garage floor....he landed forehead first. It was so freaky, I thought "I'm going to the hospital to get stitches in Parker's head OR to have him treated for a concussion, OR both." However, lots of screams, some Childrens Motrin, a bubble bath, and a good book later, he was back to normal, which is all relative anyway, right? This picture doesn't even do it justice, it was so sad. The goosebump was so large that it had puss coming out of it. **shudder**


Once he calmed down, we decorated for Halloween! Yay!!! Just to put you in a freaky mood, check out this picture Sam took of Parker....he must have blinked right when the picture was taken. His eyes and open and closed. It's scary!


I had to take pictures of my kids wearing funny glasses and funny wigs that were in my Halloween box. Cameron was obsessed with staring at himself in the mirror with the glasses and wig on. It was so funny!





One final thought:
I have something bizarre on my knee. It's a red dot and about 1 1/2 inches all around the red dot it's swollen, red, and you can feel heat radiating from it. I'm guessing spider bite but I don't want to go to the doctor because what if it's just a zit? Do you know how embarrassing that would be??? I looked up "spider bite images" on Google today to see if I could self diagnose, which is always a brilliant idea, right? WRONG! What I saw made me feel like barfing! NOTE TO SELF: DO NOT LOOK UP SPIDER BITE IMAGES EVER AGAIN!

I would show you a picture of my knee, but....it's been a few days since I shaved my legs. I'm already embarrassed by the big zit, I think that's enough for now!