Monday, October 27, 2008

Brown Bear, Brown Bear...


Dylan memorized his first book. I thought those teachers out there would appreciate this (Emily and Coco). He loves reading and he is so smart. I can't believe how well he is talking. He is getting so big, I hate it, but it is so much fun. Here are some fun things that he said this week, his sentences are getting so complex!

- Mom: "Dylan, will you please give me your sassy?" Dylan: "No mommy, I'm using it"
-After church Dylan saw Maddie in the hall and ran up to her to give her a hug and said, "Maddie, can you come to my house?"
-Every Sunday Dylan singes "I am a Child of God" to the bishop to get a sucker...when he came home he said, "I better brush my teeth before my teeth get yucky from the brown sucker"
-"Will you come step on me mommy?" (He lays on the stairs and I pretend I don't see him and lightly step on and over him...he LOVES it!)
-"Te Quiero Mucho"
-"I went peepee in the food room mommy" -referring to the pantry at Heidi's house.
-"can I have a bite of two cereals?"
-"Oh look, I wanna go to the castle church"

WICKED



As you all know, I LOVE Broadway musicals. Cameron first took me to one in New York while we were dating and I have been converted ever since. I absolutely love them!
Cameron and I went to Wicked on our 6th anniversary in LA and we both loved it ranking it in our top 3 (along with Les Mis, and The Scarlett Pimpernel). The music is amazing! So, when it came to Atlanta I just had to go. This weekend I went with 12 of my girlfriends to see Wicked at the Fox theater. It was awesome! The Fox is absolutely beautiful, and well worth the ticket even without the play. I do have to say that I was a bit disappointed with the singing in this production compared to the one in LA. Elfaba couldn't quite hit the high notes like I had hoped and she wasn't as dramatic as the one in LA. GahLinda however was excellent. Her voice wasn't as strong, but she was an amazing actress and even had an ad lib in there when her shoe broke, it was hilarious! All in all it was a great night! It was the first time in 6 months that I had left Sydney for longer then a few hours (she still doesn't take a bottle, but she is eating foods well enough to keep her full...YAY!).

Saturday, October 25, 2008

Olympic Halloween





Halloween is here...YAY! As many of you know, I love Halloween. I love being a kid again because lets face it, I definitely am still one at heart. My friend Heather throws an awesome Halloween party every year and this year was no exception. She went all out and it was so much fun! So here are Cameron and I in costume. Can you guess what I am? I know it is totally ghetto and lame, but I had to come up with something right? Cameron went as Michael Phelps which many of you know is hilarious due to the content of my dreams in the last couple of months. I was going to go as Nastia Luikin but the few people I told didn't know who she was, so I bailed on that idea last minute. Come Friday morning I had no costume and I had to come up with something to go along with Cameron. The Olympic torch it was. I thought it was pretty creative, but ugly and ghetto as it turned out. How do I always end up being in fat costumes? Oh well it worked and got some laughs and really, that was all I was after. Oh, and I was runner up to Angie's spice rack costume in the contest. That was pretty clever. Anyway, I used Dylan's swim floaty for the torch part of the costume, and an old Santa hat that I had to glue the tissue paper on for the flame. Mom, I was so resourceful, you would have been so proud!

Dylan also received runner up for his costume at the Library Halloween party yesterday. I think his costume was by far the best one there, but I guess many people don't see Indian costumes out here. LAME! Since when does the generic Indian costume win a contest? The Kid did have a sweet bow which could have swayed my opinion on the costume, but he kept trying to hit all the kids including Dylan and Sydney. Needless to say, he quickly lost my vote. So yeah, it was a fun day. Dylan liked parading around Tinkerbell, and his dragon friend, He even made the local newspaper! It was very cute. I am not telling you what Dylan and Sydney were so that you will come back see pics in my upcoming Halloween post. I can't wait! Halloween is so much fun with kids!

Tuesday, October 21, 2008

My Baby Girl





Sydney is 6 months old! She is growing up so fast! I know a few of you have been wanting some video of her so here you go. Today after we got out of the bath she was in a giggly mood so I thought it would be fun to get her on video. Look at what a cutie chunk she is. "I just love her so-o-o-o-o mu-u-u-u-ch!"...what movie?

Thursday, October 16, 2008

The luckiest!



Ok so I have to brag about my husband once again. I have been feeling a bit down lately, tired of kids, tired of the economy, tired of monotony, and really, just tired of life. It seems that there is so much sadness these days. I have so many close friends and family members experiencing so much pain these days, and it is just hard to bear. Things just seem so gloomy, you know? So anyway, Cameron, being the guy that he is, came home two nights ago with a big smile only to say that we needed to get the kids to bed because he had something planned for us. Oh great I think, what does that mean? Is this going to be another rock band night for my benefit? :) Anyway, he proceeded to take me downstairs and tell me about this game that he made up while he was at work. He had made this card of tabs 1-10 and I had to spin the wheel to pick a number. Whatever number it landed on we had to do what it said for 7 min, and ONLY 7 min...he even had a timer. (7 being the lucky number since we have been married for 7 years.) We also could only talk about marriage stuff...whatever the number was that I spun was the number or year in our marriage that we could talk about (mostly our favorite things that had happened during that year of our marriage). Anyway, it was very sweet and just to give you an idea of what some of the activities were, one was to lay outside in the hammock together, one was to paint a picture of our future, which was so awesome and inspiring to think about. (Neither of us can paint, but we tried to humor each other with it.) Another was that we had to randomly choose a word out of the dictionary and give it to the other person who had to write a poem in 7 min ending with that word. Cameron's word was nestle, and mine was blight. How appropriate right? :) It was just a very sweet and romantic thing for him to do, and I love him so much for those moments that he creates in our marriage. He is so much fun and yet such a romantic...what a perfect mix! I love you sweetness!

Wednesday, October 8, 2008

This one is for you mom!

I finally got Dylan to sing I am a Child Of God on camera. Mom has been asking for it so here you go! Yay!

Enjoy!

New meaning for Busy

This week I had the privilege of babysitting for my nieces and nephews for a full week. I say privilege because I really enjoyed them and learned a lot from them despite how hard it was to have 6 kids for a week. I have a new found respect for parents of 5 or more children, let me tell you that. I never knew what busy was until I experienced firsthand 6 kids of all different ages. It was CRAZY! The worst were the evenings when it was time to make dinner (Cameron doesn’t get home till 8 so I had to do the whole dinner and bedtime routine by myself). So this is how it would play out: Dylan was cranky and screaming since he was hungry and not getting attention from the kids doing their HW, the baby was crying because she was hungry (and she doesn’t really let anyone hold her but me when she is that way), the kids would be annoyed and start whining for me to get the baby to be quiet, some of the kids needed help with their HW, Maddie desperately wanted to play and get attention (or her tummy was hurting and she needed to tell everyone about it), and there I was just trying to stir the meat and beans to make some tacos for the kids who kept asking, “When is dinner going to be ready?”. Ask me how on earth I didn’t burn the beans! How do people do it every day? I can’t even think about it. It was nuts. Looking back on it now, it was pretty funny. Every now and again the boys would try and help calm the baby (which just didn’t work since she is such a mammas girl), or tell their sisters to stop whining and see that I had my hands full. It was cute, but it just was too much for anyone even the boys.

So anyway, aside from the evenings we had a lot of fun. On the second day there the kids came home from their neighbor’s house telling me about a game that they started playing, and that I shouldn’t tell their parents about it. Great! I immediately freaked out when they showed me the holes they got in their clothes but apparently they were their “ugly clothes” that mom wouldn’t care about. They proceeded to take us outside and show us this game. One person drives the golf cart (one of the older kids of course) and the rest of the kids hang onto the back and drag on the grass. It sounds pretty dangerous, but it wasn’t at all (at least not when we were with the kids in their front yard…the neighbors house was a different story since they had hills and rocks on the land..but we didn’t learn about this until later during the week when the girls came home with scratches all over their bodies…it was clearly not allowed after that). Anyway, just to make sure it was safe, Cameron and I gave it a try. It was so much fun! Even Dylan loved it! Now when we are at the grocery store or out with the stroller he lays down on the ground and begs me to drag him...gross! I won't do it, but it is pretty sad that i taught him that that was acceptable on a golf cart. What am i teaching this kid?





On Sat we also took the kids to Jumpin Joeys (a place with big inflatable toys to jump on and slide down). It was so much fun. Cameron watched the baby while I played tag with the kids for about an hour...it was so much fun! Its fun playing with the older boys who can maneuver and hide pretty well. I felt like I was 14 again.

By the end of the week I had new appreciation for mothers everywhere, and the sacrifices that they make daily. I know that with two young children I feel overwhelmed and busy often, but nothing like this. It was intense, and it brought new meaning to the word busy. It was sad but at the end of the night all i wanted to do was sleep. I usually have a few hours at night to unwind and have quality time with my husband, but as it was all I wanted to do was sleep alone, undisturbed. I was just exhausted. I understand now how much you really have to work on your marriage the more kids you have...there just is NO TIME! I did feel a huge sense of accomplishment though on that last day. I called my sister and expressed to her how proud I was to have gotten through the week, and I talked to her about how much I had learned. I didn't just learn about how to manage so many kids, but I learned a lot about myself and my limits. It was eye opening to me and it really made me look at myself as a mother and what is important to me. Even though at times it was hectic, during the chaos I was so surprised by the kids and the love that they had for one another. Here was just one example; Everyone was stressed out one night after dinner, I had to feed the baby, Dylan was throwing a fit, and Maddie had hurt her toe. The kids were trying to watch a show and were annoyed and yelling at Maddie to be quiet. Maddie had a splinter, I had gotten it out, but she was tired and sobbing as if she had been stabbed. Anyway, I went upstairs to put the baby down and when I came back Jordan had gone and got a warm rag to put on Maddie's foot and he was consoling her. It was so sweet, and I was so impressed. Olivia then came and sat next to her to finish the show. It was just a special moment, and I was so grateful to be a witness to such kindness and love between family.

So there is it. A week with 6 kids, and here I am still alive and better off because of it. I had a lot of fun, and I hope that I can do it again...maybe not too soon though :).

What a Loser!

I lost the Mount Family Weight Loss challenge! I can't believe I lost $125 by less than one pound. What a failure! On that last day I debated shaving my head, taking laxatives, running and spitting, turning bulimic, etc. But I actually thought that I had won and that I didn't need to resort to such absurd measures. Man do I regret that decision! If I had chosen any of the 4 ideas I would be sitting pretty with a $125 shopping spree for new clothes. As it is, my pants are falling off which sadly shows a bit of a plumber crack (not that you need to know that but it makes for a cute story...read on) and Daddy taught Dylan to get his money and put it in mommies "coin slot". Geez! A bit embarrassing don't you think? I love those boys!

Anyway, so that is that. The weight loss is over for me but the boys are continuing on for another 12 weeks. Cameron has lost close to 30 lbs! I thought he looked good before but DANG, what a hottie! As a family we lost over 300 lbs. Awesome!

Thursday, October 2, 2008

The Mount Weight Loss Challenge

4 more days until the winner is declared in the Mount Weight Loss Challenge! I was ahead two weeks ago (for about four weeks) in the most body percentage lost, and was down this week by .2%. I need to win (the money has already been spent since I got a little cocky :) Any tips for losing a few more pounds in 4 days? Should I fast for the weekend? Oh shoot...I need to keep up my milk supply, so if anyone has a fast, miraculous way of losing weight while still retaining some fat to feed my child, please let me know. I am all ears! Wish me luck, and a small healthy appetite. Cabbage soup is sounding nasty right about now, but a girls gotta do what I what a girls gotta do. :)