Halloween 2010

Our Halloween Party 2010

This is the pumpkin Bryant and I carved at the party and we won the coolest pumpkin, a winnings of $5.00!!

Here we are at the trunk or treat.

If you can't tell what we are I'll tell you,

Dallin aka IronMan

Bryant aka The Black Spiderman

Asher aka Skeletor

Kari and Corey aka Blast from the Past 70's style

(I actually made my dress from some fabric a lady in my mom's

ward gave me and I had made Corey a shirt too but it didn't fit him

so I whipped out that awesome bow tie for him instead.)

Here is a closer look at skeletor, because he's just so cute!!

This is my amazing mother and her awesome friends.

They dress up together every year and I think it it so fun.

I really hope that someday I have as many wonderful friends as my mother does!!

Then last friday at our Halloween party, the one where Bryant and I won the pumpkin carving contest, we also did a few other things.

Here are Asher and I enjoying watching a little of....

this going on...

to this poor dude, that didn't look quite like

this after my nephew got a hold of him, poor thing.

Then we headed inside to getting our carve on!!!

Look at his ability to focus, I am amazed.

Now if only he would put that much effort into cleaning his room?!?

Then we tried to get a picture of all the boy cousins dressed in their awesome pj's Grammy bought them.

I just love this photo even though it is blurry because look at all the faces. So different and hilarious!!!!

Dallin and Grant, too cute... Asher half awake and looking dazed, Bryant with a goofy smile but smiling none the least... RJ and Sol actually look normal!!

Happy Halloween Everybody, hope it was a safe one!!!

Now I need to go hide all the candy from my boys, heaven knows they don't need it!!!

Kids say the funniest things....

Conversation I had with my lovely middle child this morning:

Child walks into my room as I'm getting dressed for the day.

"Wow, mommy, is that your big butt?"

Me: "I don't know hunny, is my butt big?"

Child: "Yeah mom, it's big!" as he begins to pat it.

Me: "Darn, I've been trying really hard to make it smaller!"

After I'm completely dressed and ready for the day my wonderful child says to me,

"Now your butt is smaller mom."

Silly kid!!!

Our Wonderful Weekend and FHE

Last night for FHE we started out with eating our dinner together outside. It was so nice and the boys really enjoyed it!!

On the menu: Sweet and Sour Chicken and Rice

(I made up my own recipe by just combining a

bunch of different ingredients and it actually turned out really really good!

Don't let Dallin's face fool you.)

Asher loved it too!

This boy is ALWAYS this smiley!

Except when he sees Bryant, for some reason Bryant has taken it

upon himself to be Asher's bully and it really bothers me!!

Then we ran around, played ball and got out our energy.

If you look across the street you will notice a stuffed scary guy.

It is actually a stuffed scary masked doctor. The boys were standing at the fence and talking about him and talking about how he was scary so we decided to go take a closer look at him to ease their fears. It actually did help them not be scared.

After being outside we headed in and got a bath and ready for bed and spent some time reading books together.

Another fun dinner picture.

Then this weekend we started off our Saturday morning with chores.

I helped the boys do theirs before finsihing my own.

This is how I would prefer "them doing their chores" to look, and someday it will, but for now it looks more like...

this.

(photo taken by my personal photographer Dallin M. Whiting)

After chores were done I started in on the cake I was supposed to make for a new member's baptism, per request. It was super good if you want my opinion then after the baptism Corey and I headed out on a date. My lovely mother offered to watch the boys for us, thanks mom!

We have started a budget and told ourselves that if we can manage our money well and have money left at the end of the week from our alloted "weekly budget money" then we would go on a date with that money. So this last week I did really well and we were able to go out to dinner. We went to one of our all time favorites, On the Border. My mom even had a coupon for buy one entrée get one free so our dinner only cost us $11. That was awesome!!!

Sunday

Then on Sunday I got the boys dressed up really nice. My mom's friend gave me a TON of little boy ties and I have been having lots of fun making the boys super cute on Sundays. I mean come on all I have is boys and the only thing you can change on their "Sunday Outfit" is their tie. I think my boys are going to have a ton of ties throughout their lives. It's actually made dressing them on Sunday's fun, I can't even imagine what it would be like to dress a girl.

Good Fun and Even Better Weather

Today while at the store we stopped by the

Kids Play Area to let he kids play on all the fun toys.

It has always been a blast for them until today.

Today they realized that these things are a lot more fun if you have money.

Dallin kept asking for some pennies. I told him he probably wasn't going to get any so to just try and have fun without any. He did pretty good. Then when they started to get a little bored I suggested we head home to watch the movie Mommy rented for them.

This guy had a blast just watching his brothers jump from one thing to the next!

He found it incredibly hilarious when both his brothers took off running out into

the store after Mommy suggested going home to watch the movie.

Lately the weather has been super beautiful. I love it!!

I can leave the doors open and we have been spending oobers of time outside.

Recently we planted our winter lawn and I planted some flowers in the planter Corey built for me many months ago. I love going outside and just working on the yard while the boys play around. We have a bunch of weeds right now so I've been working on getting those to go away and soon we will be working on getting more grass into our back yard. I love having my yard green! I actually look forward to our Saturday chores because I get to mow the lawn and I love love love a freshly mowed lawn!

And I can't believe it's already almost 4pm. I get to go to the temple tonight, which I am way excited about. My lovely niece is coming over to watch the boys for me. It is her first time baby sitting for me all by herself. I'm sure she'll do great.

Here's to a good day and night.

I love days like this!!

Boy, n: a noise with dirt on it

I think I say this way to much...

I'm super, duper frustrated with my kids.

I don't understand what I am doing wrong. I feel like I am trying really hard to be a good mom, to let my kids be "kids" and I'm trying to teach them to be good kids and good people. But I also feel like I am missing something. And it's a BIG something too. Cause honestly I really believe there is either something wrong with them or something wrong with me, and by me I mean my parenting skills. For instance...

This morning, Saturday, I have decided that it is to be Chore day. I made a chart with everyones responsibilities on it. We started out strong. The boys were outside helping me clean the backyard. Then after that Bryant helped me take the trash out. And then I lost them. They were off doing what ever they wanted and it was done. I however continued to clean my little tushy off. Dallin kept asking to watch a movie but I kept telling him when he was ready to help me finish his chores then I would let him watch the movie. We finally finished their chores.

So the rest of the morning I allowed them to play/watch a movie while I finished my chores. I stopped every so often to give needed and asked for hugs and cuddles. I was giving them the attention I felt they needed. Showing them that I did care and love them. Then around noon I was pretty much done with chores and I really did a good job cleaning, swept, mopped, dusted, laundry, bathrooms, I even mopped the bedrooms, cleaned my room. Anyways so I stopped made lunch and my Aunt came over to talk so we talked.We went outside with the boys to watch them play. Then when I was walking her out to her car and saying goodbye the boys got themselves in HUGE trouble.

Take a look at these two pictures.

What do you think that red stuff is?

No it's not blood, and I suppose I should be glad for that.

It the contents of an entire bottle of strawberry syrup.

I am just so dang sick and tired of my kids getting into things and braking things and fighting and throwing things, and ah pretty much everything they do drives me crazy. I really don't know what to do about this problem. I mean I had just freaking mopped that floor. In the two minutes I walked outside and said goodbye to my aunt my children managed to throw all of the stuffed animals off their bed all over the floor, and empty the strawberry syrup all over it too. I mean there has to be something wrong with this, this can't be normal? I'm just so lost as to what to do with them to help them be better kids and people cause all my patience and love isn't doin a thang, ?#@%&$!!!

So, I did put them in time out, for a WHILE and then explained to them what they did was very bad and wrong, then I locked them outside for a while to play.

I think they might be part animal/human/something very scary and I'm not sure anybody can know how to raise that kind of creature.

This is just ONE of the many, many, many things they do in a day that aren't exceptable by normal people. I feel I am losing this battle of raising kids. At least today and most days.

Party at Aunt Kari's!!!

I have been dying to make some fun cupcakes in spirit of Halloween.

So last night I had my nieces and nephews over to do just that.

These are the cute spider cupcakes that we made.

Ella really enjoyed eating them.

I hope you brushed her teeth Carolyn, sorry!

Everyone was able to make there own cupcake how ever they wanted, it just had to be a spider.

Ninja Sunny wanted hers to be a princess spider.

Bryant and Ella went the traditional route.

Angie, Logan and Dallin with the finished spiders.

This is a little backwards I know,

but here are the kids putting together their spiders.

Helpful Dallin making sure everyone could see their spiders.

But before we could start decorating our spiders they had to bake.

So while they did that we entertained ourselves doing things like...

Dancing.

Dallin was a little embarrassed after he realized we were taking pictures of his awesome dance moves. Just kidding, he is an amazing dancer, no joke, and would never be embarrassed about that!

Ella, Dallin, and Bryant all hit the dance floor for some move'n and groove'n fun.

Look at those arms, man he was really getting into it!!

Asher enjoyed the show while he ate his dinner.

There was a little fight that took place.

Thankfuly it was only between the Hulk and Logan.

Angie was my big helper, she's awesome!!

A little bit of bed jumping took place too!

I know I'm terrible for letting them do this but it

was supervised and they had a blast!!

After we played, danced, and made cupcakes, we all sat down to enjoy a movie,

How to Train a Dragon.

It was such a fun night I loved having my nieces and nephews over.
I'm thinking of starting a tradition, at least once a month for everyone to come to Aunt Kari's and have a Friday night Party!!!

So much has been going on lately...

Well at least that is how it feels to me. I can't really even remember most of it. I think it mostly has something to do with taking care of my three crazy energetic monkeys. They keep me PLENTY busy which make me feel like so much has been going on lately. But on top of them, this past week and a couple weeks before that, my lovely husband was preparing, and I mean major PREPARING, for a pilot interview he was going to be having this past Monday (yesterday). He spent several hours away from home in a flight simulator that he had to rent out. He spent many, many, many hours filling out paper work, studying, and going over and over paper work. That is, on top of his work schedule. He was one busy man. Which also made me one busy (crazy) mama. So last Sat. I decided to try and help him out as much as I could along with keeping up my chores. I ran to the Kinko's to make copies for the second time since he found mistakes on his first set of copies. I decided to take all three monkeys to try and give daddy a much needed break so he could try to relax and study, cause you know we need him to get this pilot job. Well, that was a HUGE mistake!!! I can't really remember what all happened in that Kinko's that day, I was feeling pretty dizzy chasing that crazy kids around, trying to tell the employee the specific instructions that Corey had for printing his papers and again trying to keep the kids in sight. At one point Dallin was very concerned about my bag being open just a little and made sure I shut it, kinda weird but whatever. So I finally get done get back in the car, huge sigh, exhaustion, get home and Dallin says, "Mom, you can get the candy out of your bag now, I want it." That's when I realized he was wanting me to shut the bag because he had put a bag of candy that he STOLE in it. So I put him and Asher back in the car to go return the candy. Then back home to take his timeout for stealing, he had no clue when saying sorry and handing back the candy that he was in trouble and that it was a bad thing to not steal. So Saturday night Corey spent quite a bit of time organizing all his paper work and getting his bag packed and all ready to go early the next morning. His wonderful sister was picking him up at 5 am, thanks Kirsten again! So he was off. He sent me a message that he had got on the plane and was headed to Texas (where the interview was to take place Monday morning at 8 am). That was a good thing! Then when I got up with the boys later that morning I walked out to the living room and noticed a nice new folder on our entry way cabinet. In this nice new folder contained pretty much every IMPORTANT piece of paper Corey would need and had spent a numerous amount of hours preparing, and it was sitting in my entry way. I con't even tell you the amount of madness, I mean sadness I felt when I saw that. I gave him a nice little text, knowing he was on the plane still, "did you need this folder with all your papers in it?". When he got that text he just about pooped his pants. Yes indeed he did need that folder. I didn't figure that out until I was at church struggling with my three crazy monkeys to be somewhat reverent in sacrament meeting. I tried to escape to the mothers lounge where a bunch of other lovely mothers had ran off to with their hungry and cranky kids. It was not a good day for me and I am a little sad that those women who don't really know me had to see my "not so nice mommy" side. Then I just left in tears from the stress of it all. I got home and just broke down. I sobbed and sobbed and sobbed. I talked to Corey trying to figure out a way to get the folder to him. I said if I leave now I can drive it to you. He shot that idea down almost as soon as the idea was thought, "Kari you haven't had a good nights sleep in how long and you fall asleep on the 4 hour drive to Eagar, how will you make it 18hrs to Texas?" Ok bad idea, but I would have done it if I needed to. I called my Dad in tears, "Dad what do I do?" He said "Kari buy a plane ticket and fly there, mom and I will watch the kids." I said "dad that is crazy! DO you know how much that ticket would be?" Well, my amazingly awesome parents wouldn't let me not go, them along with a Corey's parents helped pay the way, and my parents took the kids happily so that I could deliver the papers to Corey. It was very nice to have a break! Thanks again, so so so so much Mom and Dad. So I arrived in Texas later that night helped Corey study, went to bed early to get a good nights sleep before the big interview, got up almost every hour with nerves for the big interview (that was Corey and I both), and watched him leave the following morning for his interview. I said many prayers that morning and into the afternoon. I figured if he hadn't come back right away that was a very good sign. I enjoyed my child free afternoon and had lunch by myself, watched a bit of tv, and just relaxed. I headed to the airport where I was to meet Corey before we both headed home. I was a little worried since he was taking forever that he might miss the flight. Then he finally showed up and we sat down and talked and he revealed to me that he was not selected for the job. Huge, I mean HUGE bummer. I was so hopeful, and although I didn't like the thought of packing my house and moving across the country again I was getting more and more comfortable with the idea and I would do it! When he told me he wasn't selected I felt this huge weight and heaviness come over me and I hoped for a second that he was kidding and he was gonna say something like "Gotcha" but one look at his face and I knew he wasn't kidding. Such sadness. I felt so bad for him that he had tried so hard and did what he felt was really well at the interview but still wasn't selected. This nice couple came and sat by us and were talking to Corey about how hard it is for people in the economy right now, but he had a great job and they were flying first class, I wanted to spit on him, even though he was very nice. I guess I was just having and kinda still have a bad attitude towards people with great jobs that they like. Then we got on the plane to head home. Let me just say I'm not a huge fan of flying. I always feel sick. I don't like the smell of airports or planes. Talk about nauseating!! And then the motion sickness isn't that great either. Well I felt pretty nasty before we got on the plane and then the whole flight I felt horrible and as we were coming in to Phoenix I lost it all! I felt so bad for all the people around me. It's so embarrassing. That's another reason I hate flying, I'm always worried that "that " will happen. And this time it did. So now we're home and trying to figure out what our next step will be. I was just really hoping to be done with "trying to figure out the next step/ interview will be".

Oh my goodness, please excuse me, I now have to go clean up the stick of butter that is all over my kitchen table, and all over my lovely second child. I wondered what that slapping sound was, I was hoping it was just water, ugh, what am I going to do with these crazy kids??

"Mommy"

I hear this word a lot!!! And by a lot I mean A LOT!!!! I do love it, being a mom and all. I wouldn't change it at all but sometimes I just wish, oh how I wish they would say daddy once in a while. Today I think I might just go to the looney bin!

While I was trying to make lunch for my sweet monsters all I could hear was,

Mommy I need spiderman on",

"Mommy I want cake",

Mommy I want my Iron man costume"(for the billionth time),

"Mommy I need spiderman off, I have to go poop",

crying from my baby.

SO while I was making lunch I...

stopped and put spiderman on,

told Dallin no cake and no Ironman costume for the billionth time,

made a bottle,

handed daddy the baby and said take a break and feed our baby please.

Stirred the lunch,

took spiderman off,

listened to Bryant scream from the bathroom, "mommy come wipe my bottom, mommy,mommy,mommy!"

SO I stopped stirring,

wiped his bottom,

helped wash his hands,

washed my hands,

went back to stirring,

daddy asks for the binky,

stopped stirring,

found binky,

hand Daddy the binky,

continue to cook lunch (which by the way was a ton of work in and of it's self),

Then I turned around and looked at Daddy and asked why they never ask Daddy for anything? Why is it always mommy? SO I decided right then and there that we were to exchange titles. I was now Daddy and he was now Mommy.

That's when Bryant called from the bathroom for the second time in 5 minutes,

"Mommy I need you to wipe my bottom!"

So Daddy, aka the new "Mommy" went to address the problem. His conversation went a little something like this...

'New Mommy'- "Bryant what do you want?"

Bryant- "Mommy."

'New Mommy'- "Well what do you want her to do?"

Bryant- "I need her."

'New Mommy'- "What do you need her to do?"

Bryant- "I need her to come here!"

So the 'New Mommy' came out to tell me that he was only going to have me wipe his bottom. So I stopped making lunch to go address the issue, again, and got done,

washed hands again,

Dallin comes in,

"Mommy I need..."

I told them I no longer respond to the name Mommy but that I am now Daddy.

They quickly started asking for "Daddy" to help them put on and take off costumes, and eat cake and do this or that. Then they laughed and said, "You're not Daddy you're mommy!"

Oh man I just can't win. I told them I no longer respond to any names.

~The reason our lunches are so much work right now is because I like to make a nice good meal when Corey is home to eat it and since he works at night that meal would have to be lunch. There really is no sense in me slaving over the hot stove for me and the boys who will most likely be not eating a single bite of my hard work. So that is why I made a nice big hot meal for lunch today and most other days, oh yeah and I made a really yummy pot of Pepper Jack Potato Soup.~

Boot Camp Follow Up

So I completed 1 full week of boot camp and I am still alive! And man let me tell you it was TOUGH!! I had to get up WAY too early and the trainer/instructor is awesome!! I lost a total of 6lbs. this week. I know that sounds crazy but I really think I am actually starting to notice a difference too. I can't wait to see what I'm like after the 4 weeks is up. Last week was just a warm up and I was sore for days! But I'm feeling really good now and next week we get into the really good (hard) stuff. I'm a little scared but excited too!