Hello pot, meet kettle

Christmas is a very special time of year around our house. Oh no no no, not for the reasons you're thinking. It's because we finally have a way to bribe/scare Abe into being good. We all know Santa doesn't bring presents to naughty boys and girls, right? Well, this is definitely on his mind a lot right now as evidenced by the following dramatic situation which occurred this very night.

I was in my room getting ready for bed while the three kids were supposedly getting ready for bed in their wing of the house. Suddenly I heard a cry of pain. I ran to see/fix the problem and Oliver had a very tight hold of Lilly's lovely locks. He's got quite a grip for such a little thing. As she sobbed in pain, and I'm sure exhaustion from a long day, I pried his tiny fingers open and untangled her hair. All four of us sat in the hallway as I tried to soothe the still distraught Lilly and simultaneously convince a terribly two year old toddler that hair pulling is a no no. "Look how she's crying, Oliver. You can't pull hair! It hurts people!" All of my attempts to convey the importance of being soft fell on deaf ears. But then when all was silent except for a few lingering sobs, I heard Abe's words of wisdom whispered to Oliver:

"Well, I guess you're not getting any presents."

Christmas Lists

My children have gotten a head start with their Christmas letters to Santa. They wrote them tonight and since I find them so delightful I thought I'd share.

I shall begin with Lilly's thoughtful composition.

Dear Santa,

I hope your not to busy to read my letter. One quistion, do you ever get any rest? I hope you do. What's going on at the wordshop? Are the Elves okay? How are Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, Vixin, Comet, Cupet, Donner, and Blitson? Oh. And Ruldolph. How come I never get to see you or the raindeer? Oh. The whole reson I was wrighting this letter is because of my Christmas list. Let's see. Can I please have on of those deskes where you can give your hair a make over? I reeeeeally really want that. I think it's so cute! I hope that you write back!

Love,

Lilly

And now for Abe's letter which was transcribed by yours truly. Any errors in Lilly's letter are hers and unfortunately, any grammatical errors in Abe's letter are mine.

Dear Santa,

I really want to see Donner, Blitzen, Comet, Cupid, Donner, Blitzen. I mean Donner, Cupid, Donner, Blitzen. I hope you're not busy to read my letter.

I want samurai stuff for Christmas and I really want that so can I have it cause I really love samurai stuff please. (May I interject at this time that all the "pleases" were added after an initial read through. Abe wasn't satisfied with the sound of his letter and requested boldly that a please be added after each time he requested an item.) I want the samurai phone thing please.

I want to be a rockstar when I grow up.

Are the elves doing fine?

I think I want a remote control helicopter for Christmas please. And I think I want to have a party rocker music thing where it says, "Party rockers in the house tonight" please. (The line is quotations is meant to be sung as it's from Abe's current favorite song, "Party Rock Anthem.")

And I want some more Bay Blades please.

Love,

Abe

Thanksgiving tradition

For the last three years my little family has begun a new Thanksgiving tradition which I find most enjoyable. We go out to dinner at Claim Jumper and enjoy a hearty feast with no stressful preparation or annoying cleanup. It is a delight and this year we got to share it with my mom (a.k.a. Grandy). I truly am thankful each year that I don't have to cook or clean or prepare anything! I think people feel sorry for me when they find out we don't spend the holiday in the "traditional" sense but the joke is on them because I love it! And to top it off, this year I had the foresight to purchase a pumpkin pie to have at home for a late night dessert and breakfast the next morning. Hooray!

Here is the family dressed in their holiday finery.

I just wanted to throw in an extra picture of the little darling.

Us girls must stick together, I always say.

Another tradition we have started is to have an "ugly face contest." This was Oliver's best attempt. Poor boy still doesn't understand the rules.

Not looking too good there, missy. You might be the winner!

Oh boy Abe. You're a real contender this round!

Oh wow! Extreme close up!

I decided not to participate this time as I seem to always have the ugliest faces. What's up with that?

I have to say that the only downer this time was that our table wasn't ready when we arrived at the specified time. Don't they know that we're hungry and you don't want to see me when I'm hungry!!

So while we waited we had some friendly games of rock, paper, scissors.

We tried to hit up a few shops in close proximity to the restaurant, but sadly they were already closed by the time we finished dining.

BUT, we did get a head start on taking Christmas pictures! Hooray!

Then we went home and waiting til the sickly stuffed feeling had passed and gorged ourselves on more pumpkin pie. I lied about not preparing anything, I did make homemade whipped cream.

All in all, it was a very successful and lovely day. Til next year Claim Jumper!

A Story by Abraham

(transcribed by yours truly)

Bobby had a family. It was kind of crazy and when he was playing Duck, Duck, Goose one day he actually missed his turn. When he was playing Red Rover he actually fell on his face on the ground. When he was playing football with his friend, Maylee, he actually fell and bumped on her head when they were playing outside. And when he was having dinner one time he actually slipped and bonked on his mom when he was having dinner and actually fell on the ground. And when he was going to the ocean one day when he was playing in the ocean he actually got caught in the current and when he was in the current it was actually a bad thing. There was a shark and it ate him. And his brother, Abe, he got bit by the same shark and the seals bonked them and then they were skeletons.

THE END

the reasons why I ate my weight in bite sized candy

Have you ever seen a garden gnome with a pink pacifier?? It's really Oliver. He's pretty cute.

Abe was the Hulk and Lilly was a zombie doctor. A few days before Halloween, we took the kiddies to the trunk or treat at the church. We made sure Oliver had his bucket ready so he could score some candy for his parents. And boy, we were not disappointed.

The Saturday before the big holiday, we took the kids to Springs Preserve, this outdoor desert garden place, where we'd never been before and although we couldn't see anything cause it was dark and we didn't know where to go for the candy we finally got into the groove and had a nice time. Anything for more candy.

I think Kelly got confused. He went in to smooch the bride of Frankenstein cause she and I look so similar first thing in the morning.

We took a haunted hayride that was super spooky and full of zombies and a headless horseman
and it was a good time.

Then the BIG day finally arrived. Lilly decided to be a princess while at school for the costume parade. Just before I took this picture she gave me the snootiest look cause I couldn't find her during the parade. She was NOT HAPPY.
Remind me never to let her down again.

That night the kids got ready to go over to our friend's house for some chili and trick or treating. They live in a great neighborhood where the people are RICH or pretend to be but either way they're really cool cause a lot of them give out full sized candy. You can't beat that.

I've never seen the kids with so much energy as they ran from house to house to fill their buckets. It was a most successful evening.

Way back in July

This summer was quite the busy one and I shall need to spend some time writing about it all. In early July, my friends Emily, Lindsay and I drove up to Utah to run the Hobbler Half Marathon. As usual, I was exhausted by the end and barely made it under two hours but I did! and that's cool with me.

Amanda (Emily's sister), me, Lindsay and Emily post race. Amanda totally kicked our trash and was super speedy

..

The night before we carbo loaded at The Brick Oven. Where else could we go whilst in Provo?

It was great to be done, of course. After the race we downed some Monsters, tried to stop the shakes we got from downing the Monsters, went shopping, ate at Chick-fil-a and had a great time. It was a great race and a fun weekend and I'd definitely do it again...

Vacay with K dog

In October, the hubs and I pawned of our hooligans to loving grandparents and aunts and uncles while we partied in LA and celebrated our 10th anniversary. Boy, was it awesome.

Day one took us to IKEA (hooray!) in the morning for a quick walk-through and a few purchases. Our next stop was Universal Studios. Honestly folks, I wasn't thrilled with this because I remember going to the Studios back in the day and watching a Miami Vice water show. Ouch! I am that old. Anywho, I thought it was going to be lame and guess what???? it was, but we still managed to have some fun.

Back in my glory days (way way way back) this kid (a.k.a. Paul Walker) took me out on a date. It's a good story and maybe, if you're lucky, I'll tell you sometime. Obviously though, it didn't work out. Who would want to end up with a movie star husband anyway?!?!?
NOT ME



Oh boy, the part I hated most about going to Universal Studios is that they have a haunted spooky time after the park closes. You pay an extra million dollars to go in and have psychos jump out at you and pretend they're going to jam knives into your spleen or decapitate you with a chain saw. I h-a-t-e-d it but my beloved in his guilt inducing way said that if I loved him I'd go to this scary thing with him AND I had to go through a haunted house. I don't know when I became so sensitive to pure evil (meaning the haunted house, not Kelly) but I survived and finally (finally!) it was over and I was glad.

But the BEST most FUNNEST most HAPPY time I had was going to a flea market in Long Beach. Boy, did we have a good time. See me up in that picture? I was excited.

And here's some of my loot. Kelly also had a really good time. There were just hundreds of vendors and all kinds of goodness and we ate gross hot dogs and drank diet pepsi and I got yelled at by some guy saying I stole his wife's blue awesome basket. And I was like, "Yo, if your wife wanted it so badly, she should have picked it up and paid the man." I wasn't going to back down and I have my beautiful basket thing in my living room if you want to come see it. I was scared of the man, though, and tried to avoid him the rest of the day. He had evil eyes.

We took some lovely pictures of ourselves after dinner that night but they didn't turn out so well, so we have this instead. It's pretty accurate though.

We spent Monday in Santa Monica and went to the spa (Las Vegas does it better, just FYI) and enjoyed 3rd Street Promenade which is a favorite place of ours.

Our last morning of freedom was spent at the Farmers Market and The Grove. Kelly likes to mingle with the Hollywood type so we tried to find some. Here's what Kelly looks like when conversing with me.

And here's what I look like in mid conversation. So pleasant.

Well what do you know but Extra films at the Grove and we were HAND PICKED to be in the BACKGROUND! Some producer lady asked us if we would like be behind AC Slater and Maria somebody and I told the lady it would make my husband's dream come true. Kelly was embarrassed but that was the truth, yo. I grew up with this stuff (remember I dated a movie star? and I've been in a couple of shows but whatever...) so I'm not really phased by it. Anywho, we stood behind the hosts for awhile and we have the episode where you can see Kelly's head floaing in the background if you want to come over and see it. We sure do love our DVR. It's pretty exciting.

I even got to interview the hubs with the Extra microphone. Don't I look like a serious journalist? Maybe I missed my calling in life?

Then we had some lady take this seriously embarrassing picture of us before we jetted off to pick up our kids who didn't miss us AT ALL!!!!

I'm already planning our next trip
We sure can have some fun together when we're not yelling at our kids :)

The race I swore I'd never run again

Even though I had a lot of anxiety over it, promised to quit several times and actually quit once, refused to run anything "hard" and lamented that I hadn't trained at all, I still ended up running the Las Vegas Ragnar Relay 2011 and it was...awesome!

There was A LOT of drama leading up to, during and after the event, but it all ended up great and our team "Moms on the Run" placed first in our submasters and third overall womens. I did make a promise to myself, though, that I WILL actually train for next year so that I won't be the slowest gal in the van...again.
(My leg with a Ragnar tattoo and lines marking the completion of 2 out of 3 legs)

(from left to right: Emily, Lindsay, Melissa, Jessica, me and Keisa)

I had the greatest time with the girls in my van. We all got along great even though we just met two of them. Keisa is an awesome runner and by far had the hardest legs in our van but she was so cool about it and really encouraging. Both she and Melissa are from AZ and are friends with people in the other van but because of drama (of course) they ended up in our van and it couldn't have gone better.

Here I am after the race, ready to go home and shower(!) and eat a real meal and SLEEP! I definitely will do this again (as long as I can choose the people in my van) !

On this momentous occassion...

...of my third child's second birthday and my return to the blogosphere, I give you...PICTURES!

Here's the birthday boy as we charged his room singing a rousing rendition of "Happy Birthday." He looks like he's telling us to get out, doesn't he? I wouldn't blame him. The kids inherited their father's singing abilities. Ha ha, just a joke. They actually inherited mine. Boo!

I was in a cheerful mood AND told him he had presents so he ran and hid from me. He was suspicious of my smiles and sweet talk.

Oh boy, did this kid get spoiled! Cars and books and balls! Oh my!

Cafe Rio for lunch! I'm not the fan of this establishment as I used to be but it was close to Yogurtland, and that wins my approval. Plus, Abe steals pocketfuls of mints from Cafe Rio and since we were celebrating I let him have his fun.

Whilst talking to Kelly (who is currently on "vacation") and trying to make him feel guilty for missing his son's birthday celebrations, Abe and Lilly took pictures of themselves and Oliver threw his lunch all over the floor.

Off to Yogurtland! It was a double spoon day!

Oh boy, this kid's adorable. We sure do like having him around. I'm trying to excuse his naughty behavior the last several days on the fact that he has a cold and NOT that he's entering the terrible twos. Certainly I wouldn't be cursed (er, blessed) with 3 high maintenance children? Surely, this teeny little boy will by my obligatory "laid back" child. Right? RIGHT????

Oliver in the now...

- He says goat when he wants to get out (like of a high chair)

- He says da for dad

-He calls me mom. Not mama or mommy. Just mom. And repeats it over and over and over again.

- He's starting to hit and pinch, scratch and bite. So fun!

-He's the best itty bitty soccer player I know

-He stands at his little kids table and plays with his cars. He could do this for hours. He just lines them up and drives them around saying "wooo wooo" and then they are made to plunge off the side. Repeat.

-Ever since we took his pacifier away (during the day) at the end of summer, he's been talking a bunch. So that's why he was mute before. Hmmm....

-He loves his dad more than me even though I didn't abandon him on his birthday.

-He loves his books.

-He's usually my favorite child because he's pretty sweet and doesn't talk as much as the other two hooligans. (Just kidding, dears) Besides, I can be bribed.

We love you, dearest Olls.