I hope I get this all down right.

Tonight Marshall got us to laugh so hard.  Quite a few times actually.  I was worried I'd forget all of his good humor before I could write it down (which I remembered, gratefully!) and decided it was time to carry a little journal with me in my purse at all times.  Here are the winners of the evening, in no particular order:

1.   We were trying to convince him that a habachi grill restaurant would be more fun than Red Robin (his absolute favorite place!!!) and I was reminding him how they cook right there at your table and they use big fire and they toss food into your mouth, etc.  He refused to agree with me since Red Robin is totally cooler!  We tried a little more until he suddenly shut us down...  "But I want to put my food in my mouth myself."  Touche Marshall, touche.

2.   He was showing off to some friends of ours (love you Nicole & Brandon!!!) and started singing a song from church, "If I had been a little child -then he switched it up- I'd put whipped cream on my head."  He was on pitch with the right timing even and we all just lost it.

3.   We were eating dinner at Wendy's and Bruno Mars' "Just the Way You Are" came on.  He heard that song once and totally memorized the chorus so whenever we hear it I always try to get him to sing it.  It's a cute song when Bruno Mars sings it, but it is infinitely better when Marshall sings it.  (I love my 3 year old.)  So it comes on while we're eating and he says to me right away that he's not going to sing it.  But by the time the chorus rolled around he couldn't hold back and soon he was serenading the whole dining room.  When the song was over he leaned across the table to me and said, "I rock."

4.   We were in the middle of a long, long drive and had to pull over on the freeway so the boys could take care of "some business."  As I helped Marshall get his clothes situated again I could not find his underwear.  I asked him where it was and he just looked at me and said, "I left them at home."  He seriously ditched the unders partway through the day and I had no idea!  We've been calling him Commander for the rest of the night since he's been going commando.

Haha!  What a silly little soul.  This kid is the best comic relief you can find.  Love you Marshall.

Missing Pieces

There have been a few moments that should have been blogged but have been missed for whatever reason.  I'll fill you in a little bit now.  Pictures will be described left to right, top to bottom.

                                                        

 1) This is the way the boys survived day 2 of the State swim meet.  Laying under the bench dreaming of being somewhere else.  Both of them are awake in this picture.  And they stayed awake the entire time.  2) Ty's been feeling a little under the weather lately with a yucky cough, but has been dealing with it like a champ.  3) This is my effort to enjoy the things the kids do when they're small.  I think there will come a day I won't be finding their dusty footprints on the table anymore.  4) The young one front and center in demo mode of our remodel project.  5) More of the remodel.  We tore the wall out that divided our family room from the kitchen and are replacing it with something really cool.  I'll share more when its finished.  Haha.  6) I made these humongous towels for both Jon and Meg for the State swim meet.  They are huge and cozy and I think I'd honestly use it as a heavy, warm blanket instead of a towel...  7) Jon & Meg being pals at State.  It was fun to go up and watch them.  Jon came home with two gold medals, a silver and a bronze.  (I can't believe its his senior year!)  He swam so well!  It was great to watch him be such a calm and genuinely sportsmanlike athlete.  Megan did great too!  She scored points in each of her events which helped the girls team take 4th.  The boys team took 2nd.  Desert Hills HS boys and girls had a combined score that would have taken state by a landslide if they gave out that award.  They should give out that award.

I have more old stuff to document (in a sneaky, back-dated kind of way), but that will have to wait because I have some gorgeous bridals that desperately need my attention ASAP.  Hopefully after that I'll get some stuff crossed off my To Blog list.

Journal Moment

Haha.  Right before I started typing I realized I had all kinds of tidbits to share.  I thought a lot them would be quite relate-able too.  But now I can't remember much of anything.  I'll try to take some deep breaths and see if it all comes back to me.

Me as of Lately:  

I've been trying to cook more and it has worked really well.  I've been able to keep to our food budget much more easily and found a few new recipes that I really like.  It's a whole new way of life though... having to have my act together in the afternoon so I can get dinner made before the night gets away from us.  Tuesdays and Wednesdays are the hardest for me.  Tuesdays I have to have the kids fed and settled before 6:30ish so I can get them to the babysitter's in a good mood while I go to Young Women's.  Wednesdays I have to think even more ahead because we usually are at playgroup from 3:15 to about 5, which is smack dab in the middle of my prime dinner prep time.  It's pretty sad that I've been married well over 5 years and I'm just now getting the hang of this part of it.  Even worse is that I've been working in the home (being a Mommy is the best job in the world!!!) for almost 4 years and you'd think that would be one of the first skills mastered.  I thought I was doing fine because I have always been able to cook, but apparently you don't have a grip on your job description of Stay At Home Mom if you're not cooking every night.  Not to mention before 8pm.  Now this latest effort has resulted in another...um... I'm not sure whether to call it a hobby, vice, or plain old slow and painful death- my baking.

I have been baking cookies a lot lately and played around with a couple peanut butter oatmeal chocolate chip cookie recipes.  I ended up liking one so much that I made another batch (within a few days).  While in the middle of making those I realized swapping Nutella (chocolate hazelnut spread) for peanut butter could result in a new favorite cookie recipe.  So now I've been trying to find my favorite Nutella cookie recipe.  I've tried a couple and plan to tweak each of them and see if I can't create the perfect recipe.  Now I know I could just search online for a second or two and probably find one, but I've gotten it into my head that I want develop it myself.  This could be because of Marshall's sweet, naive comments that I am the best chef in the world!  I'm pretty sure that a chef would leave Google to the novice housewife and take matters into their own hands.  So here I try.  And in the meantime... a spare tire.

That's right.  I'm talking about my middle.  Last spring I made great strides in my diet and exercise routine and really felt like if I just continued in that trend I'd be happier with my body than I had been in a LONG time.  And on top of that I was training for the marathon so I figured I was pretty much unstoppable.  Well, I was able to reach my goal weight by the middle of summer and just had a little more toning I wanted to achieve but my shinsplints had another plan for me so I didn't train for the race like I had wanted to and just toughed it out and ran on the big day.  (Which I don't regret!  Anyone can do it if I did it and I really enjoyed every bit of it.)  I also backed way off of my exercise routine in order to let my shins heal and got really out of the habit.  I also got out of the habit of watching what I ate.  Now here I am just 5 pounds heavier, but I know I've lost muscle and definitely gained some extra insulation.

Colby and I were discussing the possibilities of why my stomach seemed to grab all the extra sugar, carbs, and calories I've been eating and we've come up with some interesting theories.  As it turns out, my stomach has been sharing with my butt and thighs too... but here are the theories.

   1.  I've just been putting on my winter coat.

   2.  My body has previously had a cycle of pregnancy every other winter and it must be trying to compensate for the lack of "productivity."

   3.  Possibly it could be sympathy weight for my pregnant friends.

   4.  My comment years ago that "if you're a good cook no one thinks anything of your size" is catching up to me.  (I seriously figured that I could be as lovable as Paula Deen or Ina Garten if I could just figure out how to cook like them.)

Either way, and notice there is not an option 5 with a much more realistic reason like unbalanced overeating with a disgusting lack of excercise, I am looking forward to my clothes fitting the way I know they should.  I'm also looking forward to my Spanx fitting me again, haha, or perhaps maybe even throwing them out all together.  For the first couple of months I would see the number slowly increase and I'd think it was no problem because I still was looking the same.  But these last couple of months the rose colored glasses have come off and I've seen undeniable evidence that I need to get back in shape.  I've actually been really happy with myself that I've kept it to these five pounds because there have been times that I've fluctuated 3-5 pounds in a matter of days but have recently just seen a steady, gradual change.  I am now devoting myself back to myself and see if I can't get back to where I was last year and keep improving from there.

Well, I'm pretty sure this post went in a way different direction than I planned it would, but I'll try to quickly post some other lovely things so all of you reading can really enjoy perusing my blog again.

It's rather sad, really.

Happy Valentine's Day everybody!  Here's my kids' notes to you.  I made these... I'll tell the story at the end of this post in case some of you really don't care.  They were just wallet sized photos that I stuck on some cardstock- note on one side, picture on the other.  Marshall wrote his name himself with me coaching him and after signing a tall stack of them he's got it down!  Tyler let me control the pen as he signed them and he drew a little picture on each one so everyone could be sure he was in control of the pen.  On Marshall's I couldn't decide which picture to use, so I did some with each, so I had to show you both on here.  I'm sure you understand.

So this year I decided a while ago that I was not going to procrastinate V-day stuff.  There was a cute mom from Marshall's preschool that sent the cutest little Christmas ornaments home and I thought I'd take a cue from her for this upcoming party.  I've been trying to think of what clever thing I would do and thought and thought and thought about it until it was too late for thinking and it was time to abandon my desire to be "Super Mom" and just get something done.  I still refused to buy a box of valentines, so I guess I did something worth while.  Kinda.

I knew I wanted to use pics of my kids and so I threw something together for a note and then picked the pics I would use.  I printed them via 1 Hr Photo and figured I'd just glue the two pics together and call it good.  Then my conscience got the best of me and convinced me to at least put them on cardstock or something.  But as I was cutting all of the photos apart the giant light bulb moment came to me.  (A day too late, but someday I'll get over it.)  I could have just thrown this together on WHCC (my printer I use for photography clients) and done them as business cards and it would have cost less and taken all of like 3 seconds.  I literally would have just had to click the mouse a few times and been done.  But no!!!  I had to do yet one more thing the hard way and cut all the double printed wallets apart, then cut cardstock, then glue them all together and it wasn't even cool.  I'm still kind of bitter about it.  Can you tell?

So now, to put icing on this mess of a cake, I wanted to scan them to show you how cute my kids wrote their names and my scanner did a horrible job- it was tolerable for the note side, but NOT the pictures.  You honestly can't believe how poor the quality was.  But, it's par for the course and I'll be fine.  At least its not a real problem.  Like the time I couldn't decide which baskets to use or when I couldn't decide if I wanted to buy a raggedy old rocking chair or when we ran out of semi-sweet chocolate chips and I had to even think about baking with milk chocolate chips (strange that we even had them in the first place).  Like I've said before, my life is full of real problems.

Happy valentine's day!!!

Tooting My Own Horn (Rather Loudly Too)

I've been strangely domestic lately so I thought I'd share a little bit of what I've been up to.  I'm kind of laughing at myself as I think about how I made dinner two days in a row and made lunch from scratch in that same period of time and I made cookies last night- two different recipes at that.  It just dawned on me that not only did I cook dinner (which I also took to the neighbor) and make cookies yesterday it was in the middle of one of those days that was just out of control.  I feel like I'm making huge strides.  The funny thing is that I actually like to cook and usually do a fairly good job of it but I HATE to clean it all up so I usually take as many shortcuts as possible, such as eat at everyone else's house and cooking food that requires only one dirty dish.  But today I made corndogs.  Like made corndogs.  It was my attempt to save money on groceries this week.  I thought if I didn't buy buns I could make corndog batter and the kids would never miss a thing.  I used this recipe and thought it was super good.  I liked the way the batter was light and crispy.  I didn't read the tips at the bottom of the recipe until after I was done (which were extremely clever and helpful) but they still turned out yummy.  Maybe next time I'll make some tweaks and see if I can come up with something even better.  Or I might not.  They were delish.  Here's the finished product:

I cut the hot dogs in half and then cut wooden skewers down to size so they were smaller and more kid friendly.  And let's face it... it was ultimately to make them easier to dip and fry.  Even Jamie from next door liked them.  I feel so proud of myself.

If you try this yourself, I'd suggest dipping the hot dogs in flour to help the batter stick a little easier and pouring the batter in a tall glass which will make dipping them even easier.  I did neither of these things and still managed to get it done and in hardly any time at all.  Yay me!

A Little Big

Marshall is getting a little big for his britches.  We've only been able to laugh so far (pretty hard sometimes) but realize we gotta get this kid in check before we have a problem on our hands.  I'll let you know a little bit of what he's doing lately.

He's big on being sneaky.  I know its just a phase and he's trying to learn his limits so I'm not freaking out yet, but like I said, we're gonna have to stop laughing and start teaching really soon.  If he's not supposed to do something he'll almost always try to do it and when he gets caught he'll act as if nothing is wrong and say, "But Mom... I was being sneaky."  I can't help but smile because I'm thinking, "then be better at it because when you pick up the box of candy right in front of my face it's not very sneaky at all."

Last night I told Marshall no more fruit snacks tonight.  After a few minutes we can hear the sound of crumpling plastic, no doubt a fruit snack wrapper.  Colby and I look at each other and Colby is definitely bewildered.  Then I remember that Marshall figured out how to open fruit snacks this weekend.  Colby asked Marshall what he was doing and M responds (with his mouth so full), "I don't know."  So Colby asked him if he was eating fruit snacks and M responds rather politely, "Go away.  I'm not home."

We totally cracked up!  Seriously... we lost it.  What a silly little kid!  So then we ask him what he's eating.  No response.  I look over the couch and he looks up at me with his hand over his mouth and it is clearly full.  He commences to chew with his hand over his mouth and Colby asks him what he is doing.  He responds (with his mouth still so full), "I'm hungry."  I asked him if he ate the fruit snacks I told him not to eat and he chews and chews (with his hand still over his mouth) until he opens up to show me there is nothing in his mouth.

Oh man.  He's hilarious!  This last weekend we were in Provo watching the State swim meet and before we headed home my sisters and I wanted to stop at Victoria Secret.  So we got to the mall, drove around for a while looking for a spot and trying to decide what we were going to eat.  In the middle of our discussion of which restaurant we were going to choose Marshall yells, "But I want to go bra shopping!!!"

So then this morning he did another classic Marshall thing... he's recently decided he likes to dress himself.  The first morning he did it he pulled a stool into his room so he could reach his shirts on the top shelf of the closet.  He was trying to get dressed before I got up and saw him.  Haha.  But back to this morning... today he insisted on this ensemble...

...his cowboy shirt and basketball shorts (that look like they don't fit anymore).

He's been wanting to wear these shorts for the last few days but we've been having below freezing temps and I wouldn't allow it of course.  I decided I'd let it fly for the rest of the morning but told him he'd have to change before preschool since it was still cold out but he had a clever solution for that too.  "No mom.  I can just wear long socks.  Daddy can just let me borrow his socks and we can share."  What a problem solver he is!  And a little bit of a weirdo too.  Haha.

And now he just came up with another good one.  We needed to return a movie to a neighbor and he said he wanted to borrow it for a long time.  I told him we'd just buy it because we needed to give it back and then came a classic Marshall line, "How about we keep it for longer and give it to him for Valentine's Day."  Oh the things kids say...