Under Pressure and a PSA

Apparently I like to work under pressure. When I was in college and there was a big project or paper due, I was the one who ran into class in yesterday's clothes and make-up and turned in my work, careful not to smudge the ink because it was probably still wet, fresh from the printer. As I sat down with relief that I had finished and turned it in, I was always mildly surprised to see people who looked well-rested, like they hadn't stayed up all night working on their paper. When did they work on them I thought? Is there any other time to work on these kinds of things than the immediate 12 hours leading up to the deadline? Imagine my surprise when I heard people say they had been working on it for weeks. That's right weeks. And sometimes they even finished it days before it was due. Shocking. I would think maybe I should try this approach, after all they don't look nearly as frazzled or sleep deprived as I feel. But it never happened, not once. I guess it wasn't in my nature. (This work approach didn't translate into me failing all my classes either. I did pretty good, graduated, and even still remember some things I learned as I will illustrate later). So, the point of this long story? My nature doesn't change. There are 6 days left until Christmas and I have bought a total of three gifts so far. Two of those gifts are traveling to a far away land and our favorite missionaries. The other is the infamous Lego Castle set which I ended up buying on ebay. That means I have 99 percent of my gift buying left to do AND still leave myself enough time to wrap everything. To add a little more fun to the deadlines our 7th wedding anniversary is two days, another gift-buying occasion. If you are reading this and thinking "Great, she has me for Christmas this year", don't worry I do my best work under pressure. : ) So what have we been up to? Here are a few pictures...

When Tim was out of town for a couple of days, my mom and I took the kids to see Santa. They loved it. Braxton was even brave enough to sit on Santa's lap and mumble a few things he wanted. Jace was more than happy to recite to Santa his full list and when he noticed Brax was a little nervous and left a few things off his list, he let Santa know the rest of Braxton's list too. And just so Ashlyn wasn't left out, Jace told Santa all the things he thought she wanted too. I bet Santa wasn't sorry to see us leave : )
Since Grandma was there, they got to ride the train too. The loved riding in the caboose.

We also wrote letters to Santa. We didn't mail them, I have them up on the fridge. I told them we just keep them here and leave them out on Christmas Eve so Santa makes sure he leaves the right things. Here is Braxton's letter. He said the picture in the middle is a rainbow. I am not sure how that relates to his letter...but who knows how his little two year old mind works. (more on that later)

Here is Jace's letter. His pictures from L to R are Indiana Jones, a dinosaur, and a castle. He is doing pretty good with his reading and writing. He should be ready for kindergarten in the fall : )

Now here is my PSA (Public Service Announcement for those who are not acronym savvy). I will warn you right here that it is kind of gross, so feel free to move on to something else now. I am posting it despite this because I think that it may just help some poor mom like me sometime in the future. So Monday around lunchtime I went downstairs to get the boys for the delicious meal of Spagetti-Os I had prepared. Jace was engrossed in his latest Lego building project but Brax was kind of off by a corner trying to wipe his nose on his shirt and looking a little distressed. Jace called me over wanting to explain the design of his creation but I kind of kept my eye on Brax to see what he was doing. He kept trying to wipe his nose, even though he didn't appear to have a runny nose or anything. I called him over so I could take a closer look. He didn't have a runny nose so, like a good mom, I try to look up there to see if there was something stuck on the edge that I could wipe away for him. As I was looking, I didn't notice anything right away but then, waaaay in the back I noticed something white that didn't look like it belonged there. I had Jace run upstairs to get a flashlight and then laid Brax on the floor to get a better look. It was something pretty big and white and definently looked like a foreign object so I say, "Brax, do you know what is in your nose?" Brax: "Yes" Me: "So what is it?" Brax: " A Lego." A Lego?!?!? I try to stay calm because Brax is very sensitive but in my head I was thinking "Seriously?!? What in the heck possessed you to shove a Lego up your nose half way to your brain?!? After those thoughts subsided, now I was on to "What do I do about it?" I tried to reach it myself but just ended up shoving it further back there. Tweezers? No, that might tear up the inside of his nose. The vacuum hose? Besides completely freaking him out by coming at him with a big vacuum hose I was worried it might leave a big hickey like mark all around his nose and it wasn't likely to be successful. I really didn't want to load everyone up and take them to the InstaCare for this, plus have to pay a medical professional to extract a Lego from my son's nose. Then my college education came flooding back to me in a wonderful moment of insight. I had taken anatomy. I know how the airway passages work. I am CPR certified. So I push down the empty side of his nose to close it with one finger, then take a deep breath and make a seal around his mouth (if you are CPR certified you know what that means, if you aren't you should be, so look it up : ) and blow as hard as I can. The Lego shoots right out and hits me in side of the face. (I told you it was gross) Braxton jumps up, punches the air with his little fist and cries "You did it mommy!", and runs off without a tear. Now, if you actually got this far into the story you might be thinking "that was gross and she is really weird." I don't care. One day when one of your kids shoves something far up into the reaches of their little nose you will remember this story and then you, your untraumatized child, and your checkbook will thank me. Merry Christmas. : )

I thought I was...

I thought I was a hard-core shopper, but I was wrong. Very wrong. We will get to that in a minute though. Happy Thanksgiving!! We had a lot of fun on Thanksgiving and the week or so leading up to it talking about all the things in our lives we are thankful for. The boys were mostly grateful for our family and various toys, Tim was thankful that he was able to watch and attend so many BYU football games, Ashlyn, I am assuming, is thankful for me since I can't get her to take a bottle and she doesn't like baby food so I sustain her life, and I am thankful for these moments when my kids are little and funny and all at home with me almost all of the time.

So, now to my thought-I-was-a-hard-core shopper moment. I have never gone out early on the day after Thanksgiving to go shopping. I love a good deal but frankly I love my sleep more. This year though, I saw a deal I thought I couldn't pass up. Jace has been asking for this Lego castle set for a while and it is normally $100. (We will not even get into the fact that up until a few months ago I had no idea Legos were so expensive. I mean seriously, it is just a bunch of plastic pieces.) Earlier in the week I saw in an ad that it would be at a certain store that claims to have low prices always for a mere $50. I thought, perfect, he will love it and I will save $50. I went to early morning seminary at the crack of dawn for four years so I thought one super early morning was doable. I got up in the dark morning of Black Friday, and made my way still bleary eyed to the store expecting a crowd but what I saw was more than just a crowd. There were people running down the aisles pushing their carts with crazed looks on their faces scanning the displays they pass for the best deals. There were grown women hording 2 or 3 cartfuls of things ready to fight if someone got too close to their stash. A few minutes after I went in and was wandering up the aisle I saw a little girl who was probably 3 or 4 (why she was there at 5 am is a whole different discussion) trip and before she could get up one of the crazed runners ran over her leg with their cart. Yes, you read right, she was run over by a shopping cart. I knew then I was in over my head. I still decided to try and push my way back to the toys and get my one thing and get out of there. By the time I politely made my way to the back of the store the shelves had been ransacked and there were no more Lego castle sets. I decided to ask a woman standing near by surrounded by full carts and boxes, who was discussing inventory on a walkie talkie looking device (which led me to believe that she worked there) if she knew when they would be restocking or if they had any more in the back. She looked at me like I was the crazy one as she informed me she was not an employee. That is when I knew I would never get my Lego castle set since I had not brought my running shoes, my walkie talkies and had not checked my civility at the door. So, I left and that ended my Black Friday shopping career. I know there are many people who love getting up early to fight their way though the crazies to get great deals, and who can do it while still acting like a civilized person, and to you I say more power to you. Tell me all about it when I wake up at 9 am next year : )

Now on to the Thanksgiving pictures. We hosted T-day dinner at our house this year, which meant that I cooked the turkey. I was very thankful that I wasn't pregnant this year since I spent a lot of Thanksgiving last year wanting to puke since I was 13 or 14 weeks pregnant with Ashlyn. Here is our beautiful bird that the boys named Diego.

The stuff surrounding it are apples, onions, rosemary and thyme that I had stuffed the inside with while it roasted.

These were the boys Thanksgiving day craft. They are pilgrim hats made out of cookies, PB cups, frosting and mini M&Ms. They had lots of fun making them and setting them at each place at the table. I think it will be a new tradition.

Here I am with my turkey. It is always a little nerve racking to cook because if you mess it up, thats it. It isn't something that you can whip up a replacement for real quick. I was glad when it was out of the oven without any major disasters.

Here is everyone at the big table L to R, Kellie, Jenn, Tim, Ashlyn, my dad, my mom, Jenna and Brennan. It was so fun to share the day with all of them. We had so much food that even with all these people we had tons of leftovers, which I loved. Thanks to Jenn, Kellie, my mom and Jenna for helping with all the yummy food.

Here is the kids table. And yes those are Maverick cups they are drinking from. Grandpa had taken them earlier in the day to get a root beer while we were still making the food and that is what they wanted with their dinner. I know, we are nothing if not classy.

Here are the kids with about 5 people trying to get them all the smile and take a good picture. Ashlyn would smile every time until the camera flashed and then she would look like she does in this picture. Oh, well, she is still cute to me.

Here is her close-up on her first Thanksgiving. : )

Does anyone remember this game? It is the original Nintendo Super Mario Brothers 3 game. Jace is pretty sure we are the only family in the world that doesn't have a Wii and he is also sure that we are super mean for not getting him one, but maybe I am the only one who thinks that 5 and 2 are too young to be consumed by the video game craze. So, this is the alternative. Tim downloaded some of the original Nintendo games on our old laptop, got a controller to plug into the USB port and showed Jace how it worked. He loves it and now thinks I am cool again because Tyler and I spent many hours of our childhood playing these games and I am really good at them. (okay, maybe not really good but decent enough to impress my little kids)

We decorated the tree the morning of the day after Thanksgiving. We let the boys decorate it themselves first and as you can see we ended up with a lot of ornaments on one corner of the tree.

Lastly, we have had a request for a picture of Braxton in his hat. My boys love to wear their hats anywhere and everywhere. As soon as we got home from church today they took off their ties and put on their hats. I think he is so cute but I do hope that Brax learns a more natural looking smile for pictures soon : )

Also, I have had several people ask and no, I still have not found the missing shoe from the previous post. I think it is gone forever. And to add injury to insult, I broke two of my toes a little while ago and was then forced to wear the brown flats for quite a while until I healed enough to wear anything else. I guess that will teach me to complain about shoes. :)

Lost: One Brown High Heel

This post could have had a lot of titles (as you will soon see, I think I might be breaking some sort of record for number of pictures in one post) and I will get to the shoe dilemma in a minute. We just got back from California where we celebrated my little sisters wedding. I can't believe that Elyse is married. It was a beautiful wedding and I wouldn't have missed it for anything, but I won't pretend it was our best trip ever. Let me just run down a few stats to show you why:



-Number of hours IN car: 482

-Number of hours OUT of car: 6



So, the first number might be a little bit of an exaggeration but not by much and the second number is very close if you only count the number of non-sleeping hours out of the car. Here are a few more fun facts about our trip:

-Tyler and Carissa joined us for the trip there and back. They are still talking to us as far as I know so we didn't completely drive them crazy. : )

-Ashlyn cried through the entire state of AZ there and back (we go through a corner of the state between Vegas and St. George)

-I still hate deer. Hate them. There were several deer warning signs and I made sure everyone knew they were there and what the plan was if a deer did jump out in front of us. I don't know why I have this fear of hitting one. I did feel a little better in our Sequoia rather than Rhonda our old Honda.

-The kids were such little troopers. They did so, so good (except for a meltdown or two here or there but those happen at home too). They had some hilarious conversations in the many, many hours they spent in their car seats in the back. A few highlights: (these were all real, ask Tim, Tyler or Carissa)
Brax: Let's talk about boogies...can I put it in my ear? (as he was holding one)

Brax: Let's talk about skeletons.
Jace: Okay, skeletons have hands, but no tummy.

Jace: I'm a boy, you're a girl
Brax: No I'm a boy,
Jace: No I am a boy and I am Super Mario
Brax: (in tears) I am a boy and I am Super Mario!
Tim: You guys talk about the stupidest things

-So here was my shoe dilemma. I packed two brown high heels to wear with my dress on the wedding day. The morning of the wedding we are rushing around trying to get all the kids dressed and ready, iron clothes, get ourselves ready, etc. and about 2 minutes before we have to leave to go the temple I realize I can only find one of my brown heels. They were beautiful 3 inch Banana Republic chocolate brown heels, and I had one of them. We are tearing the car apart, and hotel room apart looking for my other shoe with no luck. So here was my dilemma. Wear the one high heel that I have and stand like a flamingo all day but give the illusion of height and slenderness (I am not sure that is a word, but just move on) OR wear two very casual, slightly worn looking, brown flats that I happened to bring and look short and squat. Needless to say, I went with the short and squat look. I thought it was better than looking like I had one leg amputated in all the pictures. I still haven't found my shoe though, so if you see one lonely high heel somewhere between here and CA, let me know.

-We paid about $35 in tolls on the lovely roads of CA. That was money well spent. : ) I just kept thinking, man I could have gotten a pedicure with that money.

-The one thing I didn't get a picture of was our trip the the Lego store at Downtown Disney which was their favorite part. Dang. We didn't get to go to Disneyland because Tim had to get back to work for some pressing matters....and because he used up the remainder of his vacation, sick days and personal days when he had pneumonia.

-When we got to the temple the boys were in clean, ironed clothes with their hair fixed nicely and shirts tucked in. Sometime in between that moment and the moment Andrew and Elyse came out of the temple they both managed to get their clothes as dirty as possible. Jace had about a 4 inch grass/dirt stain down one leg of his pants and Braxton looked like he just rolled around in some dirt and their hair looked like they just woke up. It was one of those moments where I thought, okay so maybe I'm not Mother of the Year material.

The event was well worth the trip though. The wedding was on a beautiful day in Newport Beach and Andrew and Elyse looked so happy. Here is a picture of the bride and groom.

Don't they look cute together...and young. I promise they are old enough to be married. : )

Here we are at the start of our long car trip...everyone is super excited.

We got to spend most of Halloween riding in the car but got to CA in time to do some trick or treating. Thanks to Andrew's sister Katie for letting us join them in their cute neighborhood. Here are Spiderman, a flower and a monkey ready to hit the town.

Ashlyn in her flower costume that I loved.

Towards the end of trick or treating, everyone has lost their head wear.

Braxton thinks that ghost might jump out and get him. He was a great little trick or treater and liked to do it all himself. Sometimes he would get confused though and get the candy and say Trick or Treat as they closed the door.

Here are the handsome boys doing a silly picture since all the official ones had to be nice.

Jenna, Carissa and I. You get tired of smiling after a while so this is what happens.

Grandma and her grandkids. (they are the only ones so they get all the love and attention, they love it)

Attempt #1 at a family picture

Attempt #2 (actually this is probably like 15 but these were the best two. Really they were.)

The second best looking couple there : ) A couple of days ago was the eight year anniversary of our first date. Time has flown and the next picture is what we have to show for it...

Three little munchkins

Everyone is getting tired of pictures but I still keep taking them. : )

Newport Beach LDS temple

Jace contemplating diving in the fountain.

This is the difference between 2 and 5. Jace contemplates it but here is Braxton actually diving in.


The next several shots are the many faces of Ashlyn all within one minute. She is so cute I couldn't leave any of them out.

The view from their reception. It was a beautiful location. The boys loved to look at all the boats and Braxton kept trying to climb through the railings to get a better look. Thankfully that never happened because he would have had a pretty nasty fall off a cliff to get closer.

Jace got these trick or treating and loved them. With his bow tie he looks like some crazy professor.

The way there we split up with a quick stop in Vegas for the night. They way back we did all in one day. So stops like these were needed to get some energy out for all the boys, big as well as little. Here they are in some sort of tag team kung-fu match.

This is where the boys get all their fighting skills. We were in the middle of nowhere during this fun stop and I am sure the owners of the the little store that this took place in front of thought we were crazy.

So this last picture is just to brag on my cute little punkin. As of a week or two ago she is officially sitting all by herself. She has been my earliest sitter so far...a week before she was 5 months old. She is so steady and can reach for things and look around without falling over. She is such a fun baby and is getting big way too fast. :)

This is already the longest post ever so I thought I would add just one more little tidbit that I am stealing from my sister's blog. It is a musical slideshow called Reflections of Christ with amazingly beautiful photography. It has been around a while so I am sure a lot of people have seen it but even if you have it is worth watching again. I like it even more because my cousins wife is one of the ten virgins and because I heard this song sung in a Sacrament Meeting by the same guy and it was the most amazing musical number I have ever heard. It is just beautiful so check it out herehttp://mabrystudios.typepad.com/reflections_of_christ/2008/03/reflections-sli.html (I know I am totally lame that I can't just link it to one word but it is late...keep the mocking to a minimum) Make sure you enlarge it to full screen. I even used it as an FHE lesson and talked about what was happening in all the pictures.

So enough from us, I hope everyone else is doing great!

Umm...Seriously?!?

Okay, I don't usually blog about days like today for two reasons. One, this really isn't that kind of blog. It is more of an update far-away family, sharing pictures, weekly happenings, family history kind of blog. Two, usually after this kind of day the last thing I want to do is relive it by writing about it. But today got to the point where it was almost funny. Have you ever had one of these days? The kind where you stare at your kids and either think (or say in my case : ) "Did you SERIOUSLY just do that?!?

So the day starts with Braxton falling down the stairs to our basement. All fifteen of them. Jace was at preschool, I was feeding Ashlyn on the couch and Braxton was climbing all over us. I suggest that he go and get a toy so we can play "show-and-tell". He runs over to the stairs and I hear many thuds followed by screaming cries. My heart stops, I hurry and put Ashlyn down and run to pick up Brax. I ask him where it hurts and he points to his cheek, so I am assuming he landed on his face. I do a quick assessment of his arms, legs, head, etc, and thankfully nothing seems to be seriously wrong. I tell him to please, please be careful around the stairs.

I finish feeding Ashlyn and then put her on my bed with her Boppy to help her sit up while I try and brush my teeth and put a little make-up on so we can run some errands. Braxton is singing her songs and dancing around to make her smile when I hear "Mommy, Ashlyn is throwing up." and sure enough she was, all over my bed and her clean clothes. So, change her outfit and change the sheets. I think okay we are finally ready to go. Not really. Braxton decided to go play in the bathroom while I am taking care of the throw up and stuffed the sink with cotton balls, turned the water on and created a small flood. So now he is soaking wet along with most of the bathroom. So, I think okay, whatever, lets just put clean clothes on him too, I am doing laundry today anyway. I clean him up, clean the bathroom up and am ready to run errands but it is time to pick up Jace.

We go and get Jace and I walk back in the house and think "Wow, something smells like it is burning." I had a load of laundry in the dryer, so I go check silently hoping it is just a tag or something that got too hot...but no such luck. It was a purple crayon. It had melted and was now covering the clothes and the inside of the dryer. I start taking deep breaths, and just make a mental note not to let Braxton help me load the washer or dryer anymore and pull everything out and let the wax harden. I then spend the next hour scrapping purple crayon wax off clothes and the inside of the dryer, so I can rewash the clothes and use the dryer again.

What are your kids doing while you clean up melted purple crayon you ask? Ashlyn took pity on me (I would like to think) and went down for a nap after my first discovery of the mess and I sent Jace and Braxton downstairs to play with toys. (which they do everyday with no problems) Today they decided to play a new game though. It was called Haircuts. I walk downstairs to find Braxton sitting in his little chair and Jace giving him a haircut. My first thought is, "Seriously?!?" So, I walk over to inspect the damage, wondering why the heck Braxton will sit perfectly still for Jace to give him a haircut but thrashes around like crazy when I try to give him one, and find a spot near his crown that is almost completely bald. Like you can see his scalp. Then I think perfect, just in time for Elyse's (my sister) wedding in a week, those are going to be some great pictures. Luckily, his hair is so blonde that it kind of blends in with his scalp from a distance.

After that we have an hour of calm with an uneventful lunch and kitchen clean-up. Just as I am finishing the clean up part, I hear crying downstairs. I cringe and hope that it is just the usual who is the best kung-fu fighter argument and go downstairs. If you are noticing a theme to the day you can probably guess it wasn't. They decided to bring some toys into the big downstairs shower and play with them in there. Who knows why. Jace said it was so the guys could jump off the bridge (the bench in the shower). Somehow they ended up losing one of their favorite Lego guys and some parts to an airplane down the drain. Jace said Braxton put them down the drain so he kicked him. I put crying Jace in time-out for kicking and crying Braxton in time-out for putting toys down the drain and then I hear more crying upstairs and realize Ashlyn is awake.

I feed her and think maybe things will go better if we get outside for a while. I had to drop some fliers off at a few houses anyway so I feed Ashlyn and we go outside for a bike ride. Things are going well until we hit about the half way mark. I hear a little sneeze and look down and Ashlyn has a bloody nose. (Don't be alarmed, she has had a cold and I have to use the bulb syringe thing before every feeding so she can breathe well enough to eat and not choke. The doctor said she might get a bloody nose from using it) It just happens to be when we aren't home and I don't have a Kleenex or anything with me, so I did what any good mom would do. I used the sleeve of my sweatshirt to soak up.

We get home without any other incidents and I go inside to change Ashlyn's outfit again. Then I hear a bang from the kitchen and think if it is another mess I am going to cry... or laugh, I couldn't decide. Jace had decided to try and get himself a drink of milk. He can usually do this just fine but today when he pulled the gallon of milk out of the fridge it slipped out of his hands, hit the floor, the cap burst off and milk sprayed all over the place. That's when I started to think this day was just almost funny. Almost. Then I started cleaning milk up and it wasn't that funny anymore. As I was cleaning I thought, okay, what can we do where no one will get injured and I can watch them and make sure that no one makes any more messes....a movie.

The boys pick the Mommy and Daddy movie (a wedding DVD with pictures of Tim and I growing up and pictures from our wedding and reception). They like to watch it for some reason. I sit down to feed Ashlyn while they are watching it and somewhere in the middle of all the wedding pictures Jace says "Mommy you used to be so pretty." Umm...thanks. I guess. I realize that in his five-year-old mind it wasn't an insult, but still.

Yeah, it was one of those days...times ten. (In the interest of time I will leave out the glue stick incident and Braxton falling down the stairs for the second time incident). All I can say is, thankfully, no one was seriously injured and, even more thankfully, this day is over and tomorrow gets to be a new one. : )

Fall Fun

So, it has been a little while since I blogged. I have taken a little break from the computer the last week or two. It has been nice. I loved conference weekend. After it was over we were sitting around talking about our favorite talks and everyone seemed to like something different. I love how there always seems to be something for everyone...a talk that everyone feels is for them. I especially enjoyed President Monson's talk about change on Sunday morning. It was such a good reminder to me of what is important and how fast time goes. So if you ever come over just try and enjoy the fingerprints all over everything with me : )

We have a pumpkin patch near our house that we pass several times a week. The boys have been begging to go there so this week we went. Tim was busy with a football game so Jenna was nice enough to come along and help. : ) (Sorry the pictures are all a little fuzzy. About 3/4 of the way through I realized there were several fingerprints on the camera lens. I have two suspects.)

Aunt Jenna and Ashlyn. The boys picked a tiny pumpkin for our little punkin.

They had a bunch of tractors there for the kids to climb up and pretend to drive. This was Braxton's favorite, he loves tractors and always points them out to me while we drive, even if it only remotely resembles a tractor.

This was Jace's favorite. A nice Ford with a huge steering wheel. He was very possessive of it once he decided he liked it and gave some kid who was thinking about climbing on too the evil eye. So we had another talk about sharing. : )

Jenna was in charge of the wheel barrow and we had a little spill. The boys had about 25 "favorite" pumpkins and finally the wheel barrow just fell over. It was a good chance for Jenna and I to weed out the not-so-nice ones.

Braxton did not see a pumpkin he didn't like. Here he is adding yet another one.

Here is Braxton's best attempt at a posed picture. Two is not really the age to get great posed smiles. : )

Here is Jace with his eyes closed. I don't take great pictures, what can I say...good thing we still had fun anyway.

We don't have a lot of Halloween decorations and I didn't really want to go buy more so this was the result. For FHE this week we had a lesson about our family and made this lovely family of spiders. Everyone made their own and it was lots of messy fun. They are (from L to R) Daddy, Mommy, Jace, Braxton, and Ashlyn. They learned lots of important things like, who is in our family, what color their eyes are so they could put the right color on their spider, and the "We are A Happy Family" song. They are now hanging in our kitchen.

A Halloween preview of Jace in his costume. He is excited to be Spiderman. Picking out the costume was a perfect example in the difference between Jace and Brax. Jace spots this fantastic Spiderman costume within 30 seconds. Sees it, loves it, grabs it, and is done. I show him a couple others but his mind is made up. We head over to the next aisle to find something for Braxton. Twenty minutes later we have looked at every option in his size multiple times, he is in tears because nothing is the "right one" and he can't decide and we are leaving without a costume for Braxton. A couple of hours later at home (after Jace has tried his costume on and tried out his Spiderman moves) Brax comes up and informs me he decided he wants to be Spiderman too.

We had a picnic outside a couple days ago for dinner when Tim had a meeting after work and it was an especially nice night. Ashlyn joined us in her Bumbo chair (which I highly recommend) and was trying to find a way to get herself some Chex mix. She loves grabbing for things right now and gets so excited when she sees something near enough to grab at. She is getting better and better at controlling her hands and as soon as she gets it, it goes right in her mouth.

Today at church the Primary was practicing for their program next week. They were in the chapel on the stand and there was an older man watching them practice sitting in the last row. He had white hair, was a little bald on top, and wore glasses. All of a sudden I hear Jace excitedly saying "Look mommy, look! Look at this, it is President Hinckley!" That was my laugh for the day. I am glad something is sinking in, though obviously he doesn't quite understand that he has passed away.

Okay, so since I take such long breaks between blogging I have to cram everything into one post. I have had four or five people ask me for this recipe this week so I decided I would just post it. It is the most delicious apple dip you will ever have. We love it and it is addicting. Since apples are a yummy fall fruit this is the perfect time for it.

Toffee Apple Dip

-8 oz. cream cheese, soft

-7 oz. marshmallow cream

-1/2 c. packed brown sugar

-1/4 c. powdered sugar

-1 tsp. vanilla

-1 pkg. of toffee bits (by the choc. chips in the store)

Mix everything except the toffee bits together with electric mixer. Fold in toffee bits with spoon. Chill and eat later or enjoy right away!

Hope everyone is doing great!