That time of year

Yes my children have been enduring the first of I am sure many many bouts with the nasty head colds that will come into our lives. So it is every fall when school starts up combined with the colder temps and going to church, or should I say nursery, each Sunday. Funny that this round started with Paul of all people, he must be hugging and kissing the children too much or something!!! Anyway that is why I don't have much to post this week, I have started to lose my voice yesterday accompanied by a soar throat so I hope that is all I am going to get, I hate having a stuffy nose and cough.
This week we started in on our Halloween countdown calendar that I found here . It starts on the 19th and follows up to the 31st with something fun and crafty for the kids to do each day. So far we have read "The Jack-o-lantern" story and drawn our own on paper. Then we made Halloween paper bag puppets and put on a show. Next came singing Halloween songs that we know, and they knew a lot surprisingly! We walked around the neighborhood and took pictures of the decorations on their digital cameras. This was followed by making Halloween cards for some of our neighbor friends and today we are decorating our Halloween buckets. Sneak peak -because I have to be prepared- tomorrow we will be watching the Muppet Halloween Adventure movie. So that has been fun.
Last night I went to dinner with my high school girl friends. I was so happy to see them again in honor of Tina due to have her first little girl baby in a couple of weeks (she has a little boy but we all know that girls are better!), although the doctors say she will go any day and she was contracting the entire night!! Can't wait to hear that the sweet baby has arrived- good luck with everything Tina I am pulling for fast and easy!!!
Tonight is the Fall Festival at Abby's school, so we are headed over there for all the fun with Cory, Jill and their darling kids. That should be a great time and Abby almost can't wait- the only thing that has helped is the fact that she had her first field trip to the pumpkin patch today!
Tomorrow is another home BYU game which means I am suppose to go over to my mothers to hang out with the girls and cousins, but with the head colds I am not sure if we are going to make it. My sister sent this word art over a little while ago and I had a good laugh:So very true for my sister-in-law Jenn and I!!! But as I was saying before I really don't mind because it give us all an excuse to get together, visit, play, eat good food, and have a great time together!
Exhibit A:Abby and Laurynn are the very best of friends!! As soon as they see each other they run and hug and walk off together hand in hand and proceed to laugh and laugh and laugh- so precious!
Exhibit B:Look at those happy sweet faces having fun together!
Exhibit C:Last time we were together we made these!!! My mother makes the BEST caramel for dipping apples, Fantastic and Fun!!!
So while the season may be long to some, and Brandon's family can only wear blue on Saturday, I really do enjoy the football season, just not cold and flu season!!!

While Grandpa is away...

Grandma and the Grandkids will play!!!
Twice a year, on fall break and spring break, my father goes back home to Shelley ID to help my grandfather get his house/yard/garden ready for winter or summer. This weekend would be no different except that my mother wasn't going to go with him. Instead she decided to fly east and visit my brother Randy and his family that just moved to Iowa and my sister Hillary was going to drive up from Missouri to spend the weekend as well. Now I will not delve into my mood of being upset that I couldn't join her, or my dad for that matter, but will focus on the fact that my mother had ONE night that she was going to have to spend alone before her flight. So what does any loving and devoting grandmother who is afraid of the dark do you ask? Invite her grandchildren over for a sleepover of course!!! While I find her to be completely insane- my girls were SOOOOO excited about the idea that yesterday at 4:00pm they were pulling on my legs and begging me to "Please, Please, go to grandma's for a sleepover"!!! even though nobody would be there until 6:00pm (Naturally Liv was confused when we got there that both grandma's didn't have a "dragonfly room" but we worked it out!!)
I did stay for awhile to help with dinner, get them in there pajamas and wish grandma and my very brave sister-in-law Jenn luck!!
Here are all the girls snuggled into Grandma's bed watching Bednobs and Broomsticks:Here are the boys down stairs watching Indiana Jones:Of course I couldn't leave out the resident superhero's that made the party:It was reported to me that the girls didn't go to sleep until midnight- no word on the exact time that Grandma closed her eyes- I am guessing much earlier explaining the grins on the childrens faces in the morning!!!!

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!!