What a crazy afternoon-

So Ladybug's door knob has been sticking for a while, but today I went to get her from her nap and I just couldn't get the door knob to open. So I wiggled it, jiggled it, did everything I could think of. Finally I take the door knob off to find that it's broken inside. I was trying to persuade my almost 2 year old to take her side of the door knob out (that didn't go so well) so I had to just push it in, well apparently she was directly below it, cause I heard it hit her and then she just started screaming.

So I'm using a screwdriver to try and get the broken mechanism to move, meanwhile Ladybug is in her room, in the dark, screaming her head off and trying to shove her end of the door knob back in the hole. We finally had to have Hubbie rescue us because it was time to get Little Man from school.

Meanwhile Squirt is rubbing my back, singing to Ladybug and reminding us both to "stay calm."-

Who knew he'd be the calm one?

Later, I find that she's gotten into my glitter stash. While vacuuming that up- she empties a box of index cards that were ordered by date (365 of them!). While re-organizing those- she decides she's thirsty, so she pours herself a cup of milk.... You can guess how that ended.

I am now going to FALL into bed out of sheer exhaustion!

Yesterday was one of those days where I was wishing for an owners manual on my kids.

One where I could find this sad face:

And it would say see Chapter 3.

Accompanied by Fever?... See Section 4,
Clinging to mom's leg?... Paragraph 6,
General crankiness?... Line 3.

And then it would tell me.......... to love her all day long, not accomplish a thing, drag my butt off the couch at 4:45 to make it look like I did anything today before Hubbie got home.

At 4:45... I combed my hair, washed enough dishes to eat off of, and then made Waffles for dinner, declaring it "Breakfast for dinner night" like that had been my plan all along. I even got thank you's for dinner! I guess the day wasn't a total loss.

And the princess is feeling better today... thank goodness! She's making up for lost time... eating everything she should have consumed yesterday as well as today. And she's feeling back to her fashionable self as well: Sporting a purple plaid hat, pink tie-dyed dress and rainbow colored tights. She's totally full of AWESOME and she knows it!

Climbing...........

I have to keep the ladder to the bunk bed on the ground so that Ladybug doesn't climb. Except that, one day I go in there and she is happily playing on the top bunk with the ladder laying on the ground. So I got her down and asked her "How the heck did you get up there?" And this is what she shows me. It's rather terrifying!

A New Year!

We had fun New Years Eve, we hung out with Hubbie's parents and Grandma. They're not real night owls though, so they left at around 9 and then we watched Pirates of the Caribbean 4. We ate a ton of food and played games. Squirt fell asleep at like 11:50 and I crashed in the middle of the movie, but we all woke up to watch the ball drop. We had sparkling cider in "Red Solo Cups" (have you heard that song? it's so funny, we're all walking around singing it all the time!)


With the new year brings reflection and so we came up with out Top 10 list for 2011.
In no particular order:

1. Ladybug turned 1 and started walking
2. Squirt turned 5, started Kindergarten and was December's "Student of the Month"
3. Little Man turned 8 and made the choice to be baptized and a lot of the family came.
4. We moved to a new house
5. Both boys played Soccer and Basketball this year.
6. We spent a week at the cabin this year, Little Man caught a 2 foot long fish!
7. Ladybugs stitches.
8. Little Man made the honor roll.
9. Hubbie and I running the Warrior Dash
10. Brady and Jodi's wedding and spending one awesome weekend with all of my family!

We can't wait for 2012. I saw this idea on Pinterest, but didn't have ink in my printer so I wrote out questions for the kids. These are their answers:

I helped Squirt, but wrote word for word what he told me: I love his biggest goal: Make the most goals in soccer and HAVE EVERYONE APPRECIATE ME. That made me laugh.

Little Man's is hard to read.

Favorite Food: Pizza
Favorite Activity: Coloring
Favorite Book: Ninjago

The Greatest lesson I learned this year: ?
Hardest thing of the year: Making shots in basketball
Favorite Memory: Christmas day
What I loved most about 2011: Catching my first pike

In 2012:
I want to learn: to bass fish
I want to get better at: throwing a football far
My biggest goal: to get as many touchdowns in football.

Christmas...Finally

Christmas was really great this year!

The kids in their new jammies.

Someone was leaving us "12 days of Christmas" goodies leading up to Christmas. It really made us all excited to see what would be left each night. They stayed really close to the song. Day 1 was a partridge in a rice krispie tree... things like that. We felt really special and loved by who ever was doing it. They were good too, the boys were determined to catch them, but never did!

Tuesday before Christmas, Little Man had his 3rd grade performance. It was titled "Christmas in our town" they sang songs about all the holidays centered around this time of year. Kwanza, Hanukkah, Christmas, etc. They sang the most beautiful song about Mary and Joseph. Of course, he wont sing it again for me, but I really loved it. Can you find Little Man?


Thursday before Christmas the kids had a half day so we went out to Gilbert to visit my Grandpa Stoddard. Its amazing how much my kids love him instantly (especially Ladybug, she usually needs some time to warm up to you, you can ask my mother-in-law, its taken her almost 2 years to even go near her!), he's just super cool like that I guess! We've made a tradition of going to Rain Forest Cafe and then to see the Christmas lights at the LDS Mesa Temple, so we did that while we were on that side of town too. Rain Forest Cafe wasn't quite as cool this year, because every time the Thunderstorm occurred, Ladybug started screaming "STOP" at the top of her lungs. It was comical, but got old by the end of dinner.

Friday we did some last minute wrapping and then delivered Christmas goodies to people. We had the boys take up the goods, yell Merry Christmas and run back to the car. Being a Friday, there weren't many people home, but it was still pretty fun for them.

Saturday was Christmas Eve which is just as awesome as Christmas day around here. We went and saw Arthur Christmas with all the cousins. That movie was amazing. I wasn't expecting such a beautifully written story. It'll defiantly be one that I want to buy. After that we went out to Grandma's house and ate and ate.



Christmas day was fun as well. We had church at 1, which gave us plenty of time to enjoy Christmas morning, then we went back out to Grandma's house again to... you guessed it, eat and eat... It's really what we do best.


When the boys opened their gift from Santa (a PlayStation 3) Little Man said: "Oh my gosh Squirt, we were GOOD ENOUGH!" It's very satisfying giving your kids something they want, but didn't ask for because they never thought it a possibility.

Ladybug got a couple of small things. One of them was a doll from tangled, which is her MOST FAVORITE MOVIE, its THE ONLY THING SHE'LL WATCH.

This is what she's supposed to look like. Isn't she cute? When Ladybug opened it, she just kept saying "Tank You... Tank You..." it was too funny. Unfortunately, this doll gives a whole new meaning to the term "Bed Head" and this is what she now looks like:

We hope you had a Merry Christmas too!