Copying Kristi

My friend Kristi had this on her blog last week. I love it so I'm playing along.

A - Apple Mango Tango - My newest laundry obsession is this soap/softener from Gain. I LOVE it. It smells so good that I want to roll around in my clean laundry.

B- Birthday/Party mode at our house - survived Carter's Lego Party today, trying to decide what in the world to get Miss Addie for her bday on the 5th (poor 3rd child!) and then I'll think about Miss M's party in late Feb.

C- Crafting Crazy - I've found so many fun projects lately that I want to try out. I'm in the middle of two right now and have about 100 more on my want to try list. Here is a Valentines wreath I recently finished. Extremely labor intensive, but worth it, if you ask me!

D- Delicious - I made these amazing apple bars for bookclub Thursday night. Oh.My.Yum. Allen says they might be one of the best desserts I've ever made! I especially love that it contains ingredients that I ALWAYS have on hand. Find the recipe and picture Here

E-Excited - for Lost to be starting this week. I so love the show and am excited to see the conclusion of the series. I am prepared to be confused.

F-Fruit - after low carbing for the entire fall and swearing off fruit, I literally cannot get enough lately! I've recently realized that Costco sells fresh, pre-cored pineapple for $1.29/lb. Heaven!

G- Growth Spurt - I'm finding it nearly impossible to keep my two big kids in clothes lately. I've just had to invest in more jeans, shoes and pajamas. It really never ends!

H-Husband - have I ever mentioned that I think I got the best one in the world?

I- Idol - Hoping for a great season this year. I'm not a big fan of the auditioning phase so the sooner we get to Hollywood week the better.

J- Jillian- kicking my bum as I am shredding again. It hurts so good!

K-Kutting (ahem, cutting) back - We've been spending a lot of time looking at our utility bills and trying to slim our expenses down. We just got a magic jack for our phone and have had no problems with it (runs through your internet connection) and are cancelling our cable.

L-Living Arrangements - knee deep in trying to find a new place to live. Ugh.

M- Master Bedroom - Making lots of progress on our redo! I'm loving it and can't wait to show it off. I have a couple of bigger purchases to make over the next little while and then the big reveal.

N- Naked - with the sad plunge into water of my iphone I was feeling very detached for almost a week. Miracle of miracles, after letting it dry out, it works good as new!

O- Olympics -I'm a huge fan of the Olympics so I've got my countdown to the opening ceremonies going on !

P- Project 365 - still going strong! Very excited that my friend Becky released a digital Project Life kit! My dream solution to my 365 project! I was able to import two weeks worth of journaling and pictures into her format earlier this week in about 30 minutes. AMAZING!!!

Q-Quaint reading chair? I'm considering adding this amazing chair to our living room. I love, love, love it. The only problem is that in the reviews it says it is not very comfortable. Can I justify a fabulous, but non-practical chair? This is the beauty of having very neutral furniture - fun accent pieces like this!


R- Reading - As always, working on my stack. Just finished Bitter is the New Black and enjoyed it much more than I expected (I'm not a huge chic lit lover), Catching Fire (Hunger games #2), Firefly Lane (so far the best book of the year - I LOVED it) and Moloka'i (another great read that I would recommend).

S- Spring Fever - I've got it bad! Maybe it's all the cute spring clothes I've been buying my kids!

T- Tiny Baby - tried on some 2T clothes for spring on Addie and they literally drowned her. 12-18 month clothes still fit her great. My girls' body types are astoundingly different!

U -Upgrade - we are about ready for a new computer around here. Allen in DYING for a the new iMac. The pennies are being saved!

V- Vacation - As usual I'm obsessing with our vacation plans this year. We just booked a cruise to the Eastern Caribbean with some friends this week (not cruising until October). WOOHOO!Also in the works are a family reunion in the Pacific Northwest, spring break in Denver and hopefully a trip to Utah somewhere in there too!

W- Water - still trying to get in a full gallon a day

X- eXcited - to get my tax return this year and tuck it safely in my savings account. I'm hoping to submit by Monday.

Y - Young Men - Allen was sustained at the new YM president in our ward two weeks ago! He is infinitely more busy but he is really excited for the opportunity to serve.

Z - Zoo - Another reason I'm excited for spring and warmer temps is to get back to using our zoo pass!

Whew! That was fun and harder than I thought! I'm still trying to get into a good blogging routine this year but am finding it hard to get my groove on. Hopefully this will help! Thanks Kristi!

Suprise Sister's Weekend

Last weekend my older sister (and BFF) Nicole turned 40. I have been planning to surprise her by coming for a visit over her birthday for almost a year. Her husband and I have been in the thick of planning my trip and her surprise party for the last several months. Miraculously we were able to pull off the entire thing without her suspecting anything. It was the best!!

I was supposed to fly to Portland on Thursday, which was her actual birthday. Due to the crazy weather in Phoenix that day, my flights were cancelled and I was unable to get there for her bday. Bummer. I did get on a 6:00 a.m. flight the next morning and was there by about noon (a minor miracle since the Phoenix storm hit ABQ that morning and most flights out were cancelled). We debated how to surprise her and in the end I just knocked on her door. When she answered, we both burst into tears and she could not believe I was there!! It was so much fun surprising her!

The weekend was filled with lots of fun sister/girly activities. Friday afternoon we were able to sneak away for a pedicure and then had a movie night after the kids were in bed.

On Saturday I went to the gym with her for the body pump type class that she teaches. Holy kick my rear. Wow! I knew my sister was in really good shape but that class showed me how amazing she is. 3 minute weight lifting segments that went for the entire hour. She never stopped once and not one other person in the 30 person class was able to keep up with her. She rocks! And I'm still sore 5 days later (for real). After the gym we went straight to my nephew's basketball game. It was so fun to get to see him play!

The afternoon was spent eating girly food (i.e. Panera Bread) and shopping for several hours. It was so fun just to hang out together even though neither of us bought very much. That evening we planned to go to a movie but it was just our cover for getting her to her surprise party. My BIL had set up an outdoor drive-in movie theater in the parking lot of his office and had a fun movie setup with all her favorite treats and snacks - movie theater popcorn, hot chocolate, pb cups, hot tamales and carrot cake. She was SO surprised and did not suspect anything. Jon had put together a really fun video of pictures of her life (I spent hours scanning all the pictures, thank you very much) and collected favorite memories from her friends and family. It was so touching. Afterward we all watched a movie and had a great time. So.much.fun.

I didn't take very many pictures or even take my good camera but there were tons of people there.

On Sunday we went to church, played games and hung out. We were even able to squeeze in a little craft project. Super fun and relaxing and I loved getting to hang with my nieces and nephew so much. We realize that she and I never have any good pictures together and had some taken of just the two of us.

I flew home veeery early on Monday morning and was so sad to leave her but happy to be going home to my family. Bittersweet. I love my sissy so much and we had a wonderful, memorable weekend together!

Of course I can't write this post without giving a big shout out to Allen who held down the fort here at home this weekend. I'm so grateful for such a kind and supportive husband who spoils me so much!

Carter's Birthday Recap

Carter had a great 7th birthday this year. It began at 2:30 a.m. when he woke me up to ask if he could open his presents. I persuaded him to go back to bed for a few hours, which he reluctantly agreed to. He was up and begging to open them again by 6:00 a.m. and we held him off until 7 when the girls woke up.

He ended up loving all his gifts though at the time he was most excited about his new Lego set. He ate about 2 bites of breakfast before tearing off to his room to start putting his set together. We really wanted to get him something other than Legos and Wii games, which are all he asked for. We also got him a Nerf night vision gun set and an RC helicopter, both of which he has loved and gotten plenty of use out of. Unfortunately I ordered a few things from Amazon and accidentally shipped them to our AZ address so a couple of his gifts were a bit delayed getting here. He was very cool about it and had fun getting gifts a few days after his birthday.

During lunch at school we stopped by with some ice cream treats for his classmates. I'm pretty sure he was the most popular kid in the lunchroom that day. It is always so interesting to watch him interact with his friends and see how silly he acts with them. I love it.


After school I let him choose what he wanted to do and he just wanted to build his new Lego set so that's what we did. We spent the afternoon and evening together playing with new toys and just enjoying the birthday boy.

On my kids' birthdays I allow them to pick the menu for the entire day. The following is Carter's birthday menu:

Breakfast - coffee cake and fruit smoothie

Lunch - $4 Lunchable (hilarious because I offered to bring him lunch from a restaurant and he said, "no mom, I just want the $4 Lunchable that you never let me get." Ok, done)

Dinner - breakfast for dinner - waffles w/ syrup and whipped cream, scrambled eggs, sausage

Dessert - in lieu of a cake this year Carter opted for Bananas Foster Fondue

Candles in the scrambled eggs (since they couldn't go in the fondue):

So it ends up being pretty random but it was fun and he loved it all . The fondue was surprisingly quite good and combined his favorite two desserts - bananas foster and fondue.

On Saturday we went out for his birthday lunch to Texas Land and Cattle (a steakhouse) and had a fun time doing some more celebrating. His friend birthday party is on the 30th and he is having a (you guessed it) Lego party. I'm busy getting ready for a bunch of crazy boys to descend on my house!

About Carter at 7:

There are so many wonderful things I could say about Carter at this age. He is so much fun to be around and is a very loving child. He is quick to give hugs and kisses and STILL really likes to be snuggled and loved. He is also really kind and generous and offers his belongings to others who he feels might need or want them. Earlier in the year the PTA did a fundraiser selling specialty pencils to the students. Carter kept taking money from his allowance to buy the pencils. I finally asked him why he needed so many pencils and he told me he was buying them and giving them to his classmates who didn't have any. It was so sweet and generous and I could hardly tell him to stop being generous.

Carter is also very determined and competitive. When he does something, he really tries hard and gives it his all. He is easily disappointed when he is not the winner at just about anything. He tries hard in sports and school and at everything. This year he memorized all the Articles of Faith, just because he wanted to. He also taught himself how to write in cursive and how to play Sudoku.

Carter is a great big brother to his sisters. He always says goodbye to them with a big kiss on his way out the door and greets them the same way after school. They pretty much worship him. I often hear him "protecting" them to other people and he is a great helper, especially with Addie.

He still loves Legos, Wii games, playing with friends, riding bikes/scooters, playing basketball, wrestling, reading, Harry Potter, word searches, Phineas and Ferb TV show, P.E., playing the piano and swimming. He does not like homework, chores or getting ready in the morning.

We are so blessed to have Carter in our family. He is a real leader with his sisters and has such a fun and interesting personality. We love him SO much and are grateful for the spirit he brings to our home!

Week Off

I wish I could say I had a ton of fun pictures from last week when Allen was off work, but I hardly pulled out my camera at all. It was a struggle remembering to get my project 365 pictures taken. But we DID have a super fun and productive week around here. I don't think we've ever once in our married lives taken a week of vacation and just stayed home. We're always on the go to make the most of our vacation time. We discussed pulling the kids out of school and going somewhere for the week but decided since they just missed a week for Disneyland it just wasn't wise. So we stayed here. I knew Allen was worried about being bored so we've been working on our week off to do list since the second he knew he would be off last week.

For our records, here's what we did last week:

Went bowling as a family
Spent 2 hours shopping, browsing electronics/clothes/books/media at Costco and having lunch
Played a round of golf
Cleaned out/reorganized every closet in the entire house
Donated 5 bags of stuff to charity
Registered our cars in NM and got new licenses
Cleaned out our garage
Got Allen's car fixed
Got my car repair estimates
Finished some old moving expense reports
Took each child on a private date with dad
Volunteered in my kids' classrooms for a half a day
Had lunch with a girlfriend sans kids
Daily walks/bike rides to the park to play
Shopped for an entire afternoon with a girlfriend sans kids
Made a bow holder/organizer for my girls' room (see 365 blog for the pictures)
Had a middle of the day date with just Al and me (thanks to a friend watching our kiddos)
Re-priced and redid some of our utilities to cut down on expenses
Cleaned/reorganized our home office
Scrapbooked 11 pages for Addie's baby book
Ran various errands

I think that's about it! It was so nice to knock a few things off our to do list that have been on there for awhile. We had a really fun week together and I'm so glad that I truly love spending time with my husband. He's back to work this week and enjoying being back and I am loving being back in a routine after 3 weeks off of it!

New Year Housekeeping

Happy New Year! I hope your 2010 is off to a great start.

A couple of quick things! I have started a new blog! It's to keep track of my Project 365 pictures and you can get to it by clicking on that button over there----------->

I am totally committed to Project 365 again this year but HAVE to simplify it from what I did last year. I'm still not sure what format I will end up with for my 2010 project but I am planning to keep the 365 blog up-to-date. Feel free to check it out but I will still be posting lots here.

Also, I decided to choose a word for 2010. My word of the year is:

A few weeks ago I was thinking about how I take thousands of pictures every year but do not take the time to document our lives very well. That's all going to change this year as I get back on track with my journaling, blogging and scrapbooking. I'm hoping to accomplish big things this year!

Allen is off this week with a mandatory work furlough (i.e. a week of unpaid vacation) and we have an enormous to do list to accomplish but I promise to be back soon!