The Stockings Were Hung by the... Banister with Care?

Well, I FINALLY finished putting up my Christmas decorations just a few days ago, after a week of working on it. Usually, I put them up the Tuesday before Thanksgiving. I don't know why... I just can't wait until after Thanksgiving! But this year, I don't know what the deal has been. I just haven't been totally into the Christmas spirit like in the past. Maybe it is because I not only have Christmas, our anniversary, and Greg's work Christmas party next month, but also because I have both of my boys' birthdays on top of it! The madness of December will never end, I'm afraid... Well anyway, I was quite proud of myself for finishing it, so here's the final product...

A view of our living room, where basically all of our Christmas decorations are! :) I know, we are lame...

Our not-so-fabulous Christmas Tree. (We bought it two years ago, and I love the look of it and the fact that it's pre-lit... I just don't love the way we decorate it. We just have random little ornaments we have collected over the years, but I wish it had more ribbons and balls and stuff. Ha ha! Maybe next year...) And sorry the picture is blurry... I was using that crazy twilight setting again.

The piano. I like to decorate this with Santas.

This picture explains my title. We don't have a fireplace and mantle, let alone a shelf to hang our stockings from! So I guess the banister will have to do for now... :)

The outside lights. We're pretty boring at our house with just white lights, but I just like how classy they are... Good job, Greg!

My Favorite Things...

Last week, my sister Lindsay posted a blog of her "Favorite Things" (like Oprah's Favorite Things), and I loved it! So I decided to copy her. :) I know, I know, I'm not creative enough to come up with these ideas on my own, but I did have her permission... The only difference is that I didn't discover all of these things in 2007. They go back to about 2 years ago, but I still think they are the greatest! :) So here they are, in no particular order...


#1 - Directv's DVR. Honestly, I don't know how I ever lived without this! It is so nice that it will record anything you want, anytime you want. And now, I never have to miss an episode of Bill O'Reilly! It's great!

#2 - Swivel Sweeper. Don't worry, I didn't buy this off an infomercial! Greg actually needed one for his store, and they only come in sets of 2, so he gave the other one to me and I love it! It is so much easier than sweeping, which I have to do after every meal since my boys make such a mess. It also works really well on carpet too (not to vacuum a whole room, but for small messes like crackers and cereal). And probably the best part about it is that Gavin loves to use it! So it has become one of his chores. :)

#3 - Artisan Kitchen Aid Mixer. My mom gave both Lindsay and I one of these for Christmas two years ago, and I absolutely love it. (And yes, it is red too!) It is so great for cookies, and I realized just lately how handy it is for mashed potatoes and whipping cream! Seriously, this should be a staple in everyone's house, even if you hardly cook like me. Plus, when you're not using it, it becomes a cute decoration on your countertop! ;)

#4 - Twilight Series. I figure I don't need to say much about these, since I wrote an entire blog about them, but just know they are AWESOME books. And if you haven't read them, you need to!

#5 - Cocoa Latte. Kristin gave this to Greg and I for Christmas last year and we absolutely love it! You put your cocoa mix and water/milk in, push the button, and it mixes it and heats it for you. It even froths your cocoa when you fill your cup! It's so fun, especially for this time of year, and we use it like crazy. Plus, it makes a great Christmas gift!

#6 - Satellite Radio. We subscribed to Sirius back in February and also got XM when we subscribed to Directv in May, and seriously, I don't know how I listened to regular radio before! Satellite is great because not only are there no commercials, there are also very few dead spots. (The only ones we have discovered so far are under overpasses.) However, now that we have tried both Sirius and XM, I have to say that I like XM MUCH more than Sirius. Their channel variety is much better! So just keep that in mind if you are thinking about subscribing to satellite.

#7 - Lysol Toilet Bowl Power Cleaner. Ha ha, yes! This really is one of my favorite things! The toilets in our house are really cheap and get dirty really easily. Well, I thought I had tried every possible thing on these toilets (including the regular Lysol Toilet Bowl Cleaner) and that they were just never going to be clean, but then I found this! I put the cleaner in my toilets and let it sit for ten minutes, and they all cleaned up SPOTLESS (including the one in our basement, for those of you who ever saw how horrible the ring around it was...). So I am hooked now, and thrilled I don't have to buy new toilets (which I was honestly considering for the future because it bugged me so bad that my toilets never looked clean when they really were!).



Well, there they are. I'm sure there are plenty of others that I can't think of right now, but maybe that's a good thing so I will stop rambling. :) Until next time! -Ash

Pictures of the Boys

Well, I was extremely brave and took the boys to get their pictures taken last week. It was extremely nerve-wracking for me because I was all by myself and was worried that the boys wouldn't smile. And of course, they wouldn't! It was like torture to get them to crack a smile. In fact, Gavin was on the floor crying and screaming that he didn't want to take pictures! It was seriously so embarrassing and frustrating. Anyway, this is what we ended up with. I am really not very happy with them, especially because the girl who took them just didn't do the greatest job. She never changed the backdrop, and she just didn't do the greatest job making the boys smile. But maybe I have been spoiled in the past because my friend Missy used to take Gavin's pictures, and she always did such a good job! She could always get Gavin to smile so easily and she always switched the backdrops for me. Not that I'm bitter about these new pictures or anything... Ha ha! Anyway, here they are, for what it's worth...

We actually cropped in on Gavin's face for this one, since Ty is crying. It turned out pretty cute, but his eyes are red from his tantrum!

We got this one right before Ty started crawling away.

This was the best we could get of Ty, and he's not even looking at the camera!

Happy Turkey Day!

Well, Thanksgiving is over and we had a great day! It was our turn to go to my parent's house this year, which was really fun for me because we haven't been down there in two years. It was really small - just my parents, Kristin, and us - but I thought it was really nice, because the past few years have been too crowded and chaotic for my liking!

Of course, we had a FABULOUS dinner, compliments of my mom. And for any of you who have ever eaten at my parents' house, you know just what a great cook my mom is! (In fact, I bet if she wasn't so cute and nice, she might be mistaken for Martha Stewart!) And since there were so few of us, my dad had to liven up the conversation by asking me questions like, "If you could have Bill O'Reilly, Glenn Beck, or President Hinckley to dinner, who would have choose?" What kind of a mean question is that?! I'm sure Bill O'Reilly and President Hinckley would get along great, so I guess I would just have them both! :)

After dinner, we went to The Bee Movie, which was quite the experience! We personally have never taken our kids to a movie before, but my parents have and they had to leave halfway through because it just wasn't going well. Gavin got scared and Tyler was too fidgety. Well, I was scared we would run into the same situation, and of course, we did! (But not nearly as bad as when my parents took them...) The second we got into the theater, Gavin started saying, "It's too SCARY!" and attempted to run out of the theater. Well after about 30 minutes, my mom bought him Skittles, which apparently calmed him down, because from there on out he sat for the whole thing and loved it! He now says, "The movie theater fun, not scary!" Tyler, on the other hand, loved the movie for the first hour. He was seriously glued! But then he got really antsy of course, and was trying to climb over the seats. Fortunately, we made it to the end, and we all really liked the movie! It was really well done.

We then came home for pie and leftovers, and at the end of the day, I think I gained at least 5 pounds! I don't know how I couldn't have after how much I ate! But overall, we had such a great day. It was so fun to just be with family and think about how fortunate we are. Until next time! -Ash

Ta Ta and Ty - two of the cutest people I know!

Gavin with a messy face after eating M&M's all day!

Ty, after eating his first Thanksgiving dinner! He loved it.

The men - talking "V-Dubs" of course.

The kids watching "Mr. Bean." Who knew our kids would like it more than us?!

An Update on Greg's Dad

Well, I just read a comment from my sister Lindsay saying that my last post was extremely depressing. And I guess it was! So I'm really sorry... But just to update all of you, Greg's dad was released from the hospital yesterday and they couldn't find anything serious wrong with him, so that's good news. They just said that he is extremely anemic - that his body isn't absorbing iron like it should - and that was causing his blood count to go down. So anyway, he's home now and we're glad everything is okay. And once again, I apologize about the depressing post. I will get back to making our blog fun and happy! Until next time! -Ash

Crazy Weekend...

Well, this past weekend was a bit of a crazy one for us. For about a week now, we have been planning on having Greg's sister Jenny and her 4 kids come stay with us for the weekend. She is going through a divorce right now and needed to get away for the weekend, so we thought it would be fun if she just came down and we would do some shopping and get her mind off things. And of course, I'm always up for shopping! (Especially on Saturdays when I get SO incredibly bored with Greg at work...)

Well, Saturday morning came and we were just about to walk out the door when we got a phone call from Greg's sister. She said that Greg's dad (Alan) had collapsed in the Logan temple while doing sealings and had been taken by ambulance to the hospital. Of course, everyone was worried, especially Greg and his siblings, since Alan had a massive heart attack in 2000 and had to have a six-bypass surgery to save him. So we all rushed up to the hospital in Logan, only to be told that the doctors really couldn't figure out what was wrong with him. All the tests so far had come back normal except his blood count, which was pretty low. The doctors finally concluded that he had internal bleeding somewhere, so they admitted him to the ICU and he has been there ever since. (Fortunately, Alan is conscious and the doctors aren't worried about him passing away. They just want him in the ICU so they can keep a constant eye on him and his blood levels.) They still don't know the exact cause of the internal bleeding, but they gave him a blood transfusion last night and he seems to be feeling much better today. They are hoping to do some more tests tomorrow and hopefully have a conclusive answer by tomorrow night. We are all praying for him and hoping that everything is okay.

As I've watched Greg this weekend, I've realized just how hard this whole situation has been on him. Both of us have lost our only living grandparents within the past year, and it's hard to come to terms with the fact that our parents are next in line. I don't mean to sound like the Grim Reeper, but it's just been hard to face that reality. Fortunately, both of our parents are still pretty young, and as long as they will stay healthy (*hint, hint, Mom & Dad), I think we will have them around for decades longer. At least, we will keep praying for that... Until next time. -Ash

I Knew I Liked to Read, But Not This Much!

Two weekends ago, I was out shopping with Lindsay and my mom at Costco, and we came across the Twilight series books. Linz said she had been reading Twilight for the past couple of months and that it was really good, so my mom bought it to read but gave it to me, saying she wouldn't have time to read it for a while. Well, I've been trying to read a Harry Potter book since August and have only made it to page 50, along with Ann Coulter's If Democrats Had Any Brains, They'd Be Republicans, and once again, I am only at about page 50 (but that's mostly because I just don't really like her...). So I thought there was absolutely NO way I'd have this book read anytime soon. But I took it home anyway, curious to see what it was about since I've heard so much hype about it (I figured it had to be good since my best friend Kyla read all three books in 6 days!).

So, I started it last Monday and after about 100 pages, I figured out why these books are so popular! The story line is so different than anything else I've ever read, and the author seriously has a way of making you feel like you are right there in the thick of it. Seriously, I couldn't put it down. I had Twilight finished by Wednesday afternoon and started the second book New Moon that night. (Which was irritating to Greg since I was reading during an intense Jazz game! I never do that, which shows how good these books are!) Well, that book was seriously depressing to me so I was trying to get through it as fast as I could, to get to the third. But it was still really good! Just very different from Twilight. Well, as of Friday afternoon, I was done with New Moon, I started Eclipse on Saturday, and I finished that yesterday. Yes, it wasn't 6 days like Kyla - I must be a slow reader - but still, 1700 pages in 8 days is absolutely unheard of in my life! I would read seriously any second I had. I even tweeked my boys' schedule a bit so their afternoon naps were at the exact same time, which gave me 2 hours of complete silence for reading. I did laundry days later than normal, and didn't clean the house at all (until Friday, when I cleaned it in a mad rush because our friends Nate and Mallory were coming over!). Honestly, these books are now officially at the top of my favorites list (which is pretty long...).

So, word to the wise, if you have not read these books yet, you need to! And when you do, expect your house to be dirty, your kids to be a little neglected, and your husband complaining! Hey, a week won't kill them! :) (As for you Dad, probably the most avid reader I know, these books are not for you. Sorry. :) They are way too cheesy for guys, and you will only make fun of us for reading them!) Until next time! -Ash

My Baby is Growing Up...

It's amazing how much faster time goes with your second baby than it does with your first. Of course, time flew by with Gavin but it's felt so much faster with Ty! I really can't believe he's almost 11 months, and I am getting so bummed about it. I don't know why I can't accept that he is not my little baby anymore, but instead he's becoming a little boy! This has really become evident the past few weeks as he's changed a lot...

About a month ago, he started crawling and is loving every second of it. He is all over the house, which is incredibly tricky since we have four separate sets of stairs and only one gate! They just don't work really well in our house, so I am trying to teach him about stairs early and hopefully we won't have any falls.

Which leads me to the second thing he has learned... how to climb up stairs! I don't know why this has taken me so off guard... probably because Gavin didn't learn how to go up stairs until we moved into this house and he was 18-months. So to see a little 11-month do it has been a bit disconcerting to me!

Now, he's not walking yet, but I am fully expecting that within the next month. My parents were here visiting a couple weeks ago, and my dad was holding Ty's hands and helping him walk. And ever since then, that's about all he's wanted to do. If you are holding him and try to put him down on the ground, he straightens out his legs and refuses to sit because he wants to walk! This has also led to him figuring out how to hold onto something and pull himself up to a standing position on his own, which has been nice for me but not so nice for Gavin since Ty now likes to play at his train table (see picture).

Honestly, I really don't know why this has been such a struggle for me. I should be glad that my baby is growing up and learning how to do things on his own! I guess it's just hard for me to watch for a few reasons: #1 - It means I really have to baby-proof my house now, which I hate the sound of! :) #2 - I can't just hold him and snuggle with him anymore, which is a major downer. I loved rocking him when he was younger, and I miss that so much. #3 - He could care less about Mom now! The only times he wants me is if his crawling path is blocked by some obstacle or Gavin is bugging him. But oh well, I guess all babies have to grow up eventually... just give me a couple years and maybe I'll be over it! :) Until next time! -Ash

Halloween! (And yes, I promise this will be my last post of the kids in their costumes!)

Obviously, yesterday was filled with a lot of anticipation for Gavin. He was so excited to go trick-or-treating, and he was telling me all day long how he was going to go knock on the doors and say "trick-or-treat!" But once we actually got out there, he got really shy and wouldn't say "trick-or-treat." It was a fight to just get him to say "thank you." The funny thing is, the second we would leave a house, he would turn to his friends and say, "That was fun! Happy Halloween!" Despite his shyness and having to prod him to talk, I think he had a really great time. Once we got home, I took over passing out candy so Greg could do homework and Gavin loved helping me with that. He liked seeing all "the kiddos" (as he calls them) in their costumes. Overall, I think Halloween was a much bigger success this year than it has been in years past. But, despite the fun we had, I'm glad it's over because I am getting really sick of that dragon costume! Plus, it means we're that much closer to Christmas! :) Until next time! -Ash

Gavin did not want to sit for pictures, he just wanted to start trick-or-treating!

Gavin and his friends, Ephraim and Nicholas.