Falling Leaves

Yes, it appears while I am in the office with full sweats, slippers and still freezing to death, that the warm weather of summer is gone, only to be replaced with cold, bitter wind, rain and (weatherman predicted)snow. I am not at all happy about this as I forced myself out of bed this morning, put on a coat and headed to the gym for my spin class at 7:00am!! I miss my summer already! But there is a bright side to all of this, I do LOVE myself a cute coat, hat and matching scarf, knee high heeled boots, and cute sweaters! So, I suppose I will stop complaining!!! Another bright side to cold is that the leaves have all change to beautiful bright and brilliant shades of red, gold, and orange and the mountains are stunning. Thus I made my way up the canyon with my girls to torture them yet again for the fall photo shoot. I was a little frantic knowing that the weather was going to be winter today, so I HAD to go yesterday afternoon despite the fact that the wind was blowing and the temps were about 45 degrees. So in all the pictures the girls are wearing jackets and gloves, they have rosy cheeks and bitten noses- all the cuter I think!!

Most of our time was spent doing this:
I was only able to get a few of Eva before she was chilled to the core, nose was running, and she was crying! I am such a terrible mother- sacrifice the comfort of the children so that I can scrap a page or two or four!!!

This last picture is for Amber- thanks again for inviting us up to the game, we had the most wonderful time (even though my Aggies lost!)Have a great weekend!!

Celebrity Collage by MyHeritage

I saw this on Tamarynn's blog and decided to try it.
I found this completely hysterical because Paul has a mad crush on Kristin Davis- I guess I know now why he married me!!! The one that is not showing is Michelle Rodriquez- I don't really get how that one got into the mix!!

MyHeritage: Family tree - Genealogy - Celebrity - Collage - Morph

And here is Paul's- Love it!!

All things Crafty

I have a new favorite show- not one that will replace Lost, or 30Rock, but a fun little guilty pleasure that Paul and I watch at night off of TiVo and we just find it completely hysterical and funny. Have I got your attention! It is called "Whatever Martha". Have you heard of this little gem? I saw a commercial for it one day and set the TiVo to record and now I can't get enough of it. The premise of the show is that Martha Stewart's daughter, Alexis Stewart, and her friend Jennifer sit and watch old episodes of Martha Stewart Living and bash it, make fun of it, point out the hystericalness that is Martha! I guess I find it very funny because I was a devoted Martha Stewart Living show and Magazine fan for YEARS! Yes, even after she was convicted and went to jail I still watched and subscribed, because I GET her! I find her perfectionism very funny and adorable! So I find out that she is the mastermind behind this little gem of a program and that makes it even more funny that it was her idea!! So find it, and TiVo it, because it is like watching the old SNL sketches that parodied her all over again.
On that same crafty note I have been all aflutter with decorating for the upcoming holiday! I love Halloween and this week my father brought over his corn stalks (although in our current house I can't use as many of them) and Liv and I set to work. I found some great ribbon at Costco, black with orange glitter- awsome!- to wrap them in.Last year I noted that Jerianne was hanging things from her kitchen chandelier in her holiday decorating and I LOVED that idea and so I attempted to copy her somewhat (I hope you don't mind!). I found these fantastic little beaded spiders over at Robert's crafts, along with these fabulous glittered metal words that say "Boo", "Spooky", and "eek"- LOVED them! And what I loved even more was that everything holiday is 50% off this week, so for pennies we added a few decorations. Now I LOVE them, and Liv LOVES them, Paul, not so much!!! He came home for dinner and sat down to eat and after a few minutes said "These are really bothering me"!!!! I did think about him while hanging them up because I know that he HATES spiders, but the general nature of having hanging spiders at the table didn't bother him, it was the small shinny beaded texture of them that was making him all nutso!!! Who knew!! Of course I told him to suck it up, he had 28 more days of it!!!
Now, just to finish up on my crafty entry here are a couple of pages for Eva's book. I am starting back in the spring again for her, thank goodness for the blog to help me remember what we were doing back then!!!Have a great weekend- we are headed up to Logan for the BYU game- Thanks Amber and Trace for the tickets- and Thanks to Paulene and David for taking on our three rambunctious girls for the night- LOVE YOU!!!

Sometimes they make me smile!

I have NEVER had children that fall asleep spontaneously- you know, in the car, at church, on the floor in the family room, etc. They have a hard time sleeping anywhere but their room. I have been envious of many of you at times, although I am VERY grateful that they have always sleep in their own room, in their own beds from the day they were all born (OK, and thanks to my magic mother!). So you can imagine the surprise and gut busting laughter on our faces when we found Liv like this on Sunday night!!! I am going to preface that we had a VERY busy weekend, lots of family events and fun things, which in turn meant that she hadn't had a nap since Thursday. We did get home from my in-laws house around 9:30pm and we shuffled everyone up stairs to put on their pajamas, I went in to put Eva to bed, while Paul was doing, something (I don't know!) when next thing I hear is "Bree, you have GOT to come see this!" I rounded the corner to Liv's room and busted out laughing- how does one fall asleep in that position while trying to put on their pajamas? How could she not possibly hold her eyes open or her body upright for one more minute! I will never know, but it sure did make me smile- even though she is going to kill me in a few years that I shared that with everyone!!!
Oh, and on Friday night we went to the BYU tailgate party with my parents and the Mickelson's- the girls had a great time playing all the games, jumping in the bounce houses, eating cotton candy and of course Abby's favorite part was getting her face painted like a butterfly:
You just got to love it!

Only the lonely

It seems that I have been finding myself alone at night. After long days with my darlings I am ready for them to head off to bed, sometimes at 7:30pm because I am done, and lucky me, none of them can tell time! Usually this is followed up with some one on one time with my other darling, honey, lovey, snookums... I digress, but you understand right? In case you don't that would be my Paul, in which we usually engage in lying on the couch and, yes you got it, watching some TV, our favorite shows (thank you Tivo)!! However, as stated before I am finding that after getting my children to sleep and walking down stairs I am sitting on the couch alone with not a thing to watch, and missing my mate to laugh with and ease away the tensions of the day!! Many a late nights has Paul been working, one disaster after another at work, duty calls and he then calls me to say that yet again he will not be there to rub my feet and laugh with me while we watch mindless meaningless banter on TV. So, what is a girl to do? How do I fill the next several hours until I crawl my lonely old self up to bed? I must admit that several night I have popped myself a bowl of popcorn and curled up to a chick flick, much to my pleasure, with out a snide remark from Paul that he just can't possibly hold in for one more second! "Oh come on!, That is so stupid!, I saw that coming a mile away!, I can't take it anymore!..." you get the picture, and if any of you have watched a chick flick (Grey's Anatomy, Desperate Housewives etc.) with him then you know what I am talking about!! Mostly I don't mind, because I am just that loving and understanding of his inability to keep it in!! One night I totally lost it and while watching recorded cooking shows I somehow managed to eat an entire box of chocolates by myself (Dove Caramel filled dark chocolate pleasures) and I am not even a chocolate girl! Although while pregnant with Eva I craved Dark chocolate sooo sooo much and I guess I had a traveled back in time moment! Don't even ask me about the scale right now- I need Paul back to talk some sense into me- "No Bree, you are not hungry, you are just thirsty, put the candy away!" Ok, I am lying he doesn't say that, he actually talks me out of my chewy gummy candies only so I will make us a bowl of nachos instead!!
So all of you women that deal with your traveling husbands, have men that work long and draining hours and find yourself alone, a lot, how do you spend your evenings? Mostly I am at the computer with a box of gummy chewy treats (mentioned previously) scrappin to my hearts content, or until my eyes are a constant stream of tears from drying out looking at a computer screen for too long and I hit a creative block!! Not the worst thing I could do right!!! Here are some of the results. All are for Abby's book, which is now complete and a monster of a book at that! When the cropping is done and uploaded to print it will be 96 pages comprising two years and then I begin her "School Days" album.

Of course we have Amber and Trace's wedding, I decided to keep this one simple, and I just love that little word art!
This layout combines both of the July holidays into one, I haven't done that before and I think it works.
This one started out totally different then it ended up, but I really like it! I have been wanting to do a tree and bird layout that is all the rage right now, so I went with it.

This is her "Summer Review Page" I got the "We were Here, and here and here" title from a layout in Creating Keepsakes Mag. But I decided to "circle punch" everything and stitch it on.

Hopefully Paul is getting a big bonus for all his overtime hours so that I can actually order the mammoth book!!! Because I KNOW that it is definitely the only way he would ever like to spend his money!!

To all the Soccer moms out there...

When Abby started begging to play soccer last spring you can imagine the joy that filled Paul's whole being! So, I signed her up to play in the city league that started at the end of July. In all of Paul's enthusiasm to have a child playing sports he decided that he would like to coach the team as well. I was a little apprehensive about this but went ahead and checked the box. Sure enough, because who volunteers to coach 12 4 and 5 year olds, we were named coach. So as we now near the end of our season I have decided that while coaching wasn't all that bad, it did have it's moments and I think it would be more enjoyable for me and Paul if we just let someone else do it next year so that we can cheer on our little athlete from the sidelines!!!Abby fully enjoyed playing- loves going to practice, kicking the ball around in the back yard with Dad, and especially getting all geared up in her uniform complete with "tall socks" cleats and shin guards.From the very beginning she loved getting out there with everyone, determined that they would win(even though we don't keep score and I have to keep reminding Paul of this also!). At the first game she proved to be a little timmed when it came to kicking it (she didn't want to hurt someone else, or have them hurt her!) But as the weeks have progressed she has done much better, even though she still laments not having scored a goal. I just keep telling her, while that is true, she has been able to dribble the ball all the way down the field and tried making a kick at the goal- so much progress from the first game!
I have to say that with one more game to go next week I am sorry that Abby will be done with a very fun activity that she really enjoyed. However, I am glad to be done, the sister's are glad to not have to sit for an hour on the sidelines and not bother mommy while she subs players, and Paul, I think, is glad to not have to take care of 12 rambunctious kids anymore, not to metion the early game starts!!

Until next year round soccer ball, until next year!

PS- Thanks to my Mom and Dad who came to a game and took pictures for me!!

PPS- I find it very funny that nobody could tell who was in the pictures in my previous post!! I had better make sure to identify in the future- by the way, it's ABBY in these pictures!!! HAHAHA

Sunshine on a clowdy day

While the rain that has befallen the valley has it's down points- it canceled my swim last night, and probably tomorrow mornings as well, wet shoes tracked across my floors, trying to find a bug for Abby to bring to school in her bug house for science (nearly impossible in the rain) and the bottom ridge of my pants getting wet in the grass, etc. There is a bright side. Not only being able to open the windows and smell the freshness lofting in on the breeze or listening to the thunder crashing while all snuggled up with Liv on the couch, but this of course:
Watching these two run up and down the street together laughing and giggling while I sit in the doorway and smile!