This Week's Randoms

The new pretzel M&Ms...YUM. Love the sweet and salty combo.

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I love birthdays. They give me a reason to make cakes. My sister came to spend the night on her birthday so Ali and I made her this little diddy. I put Ali in charge of unwrapping the whole package of mini Reese's peanut butter cups without eating them. She kept saying, "I doing SO good. I not eating any of them! I a GOOD helper! I not eating any of them". I praised her and told her I couldn't do this job without her while I kept frosting. After about 5 minutes I happened to look up and noticed her process. Unwrap. Lick. Place candy in the to-use-for-decorating-bowl. Nice. The kicker is that night, Crystal, let Ali help her blow out the candles but warned her not to, "spit on the cake". Heh heh, little did she know.

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Football season is here! Yay! We bought 2 season tickets this year. Dave, of course, goes to every game and takes one of us girls as his date. This first game he took Emma. Unfortunately, the season ticket holder who has a seat next to ours is, errrrrr, quite large. So large in fact that Emma had to sit on Dave's lap the whole time. Are you kidding me?! That one seat that was used to house his left butt-cheek cost us a small fortune. Grrrr. Things will have to change though because I'm quite sure Canyon man and I won't fit on Dave's lap for the UofU vs. BYU game.

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I have designated Mondays as...Cookie Mondays. Every day when Emma gets home from school we have snack and talk about the girls' day. On Mondays she comes home to a big plate of nice warm cookies. We eat and then I freeze the rest for her school lunches for the week. I now love Mondays.

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We recently scored one of these babies for a whole $25. I'm stoked. As soon as Canyon is a little (or a lot) bigger we can enjoy long family bike rides again.

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My so called, maternity leave ends next week. I'm wishing I would have taken another month off. I love photography buuuut I'm not quite ready to leave my baby.

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I have noticed lately that during an intense part of a workout, be it a steep hill, sprint, etc. my mind reverts back to the same frame it used to get me through the long, hard contractions I had during labor with Canyon. "I can do this, I can do this, I can do this. Push through, push though, push through. Breath, breath, breath. I can do this, I can do this, I can do this". It's funny, I laughed when I realized what I was doing, but it seems to work well.

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I've had this book for over a week now and am only, like, an 1/8th of the way into it. I finished both of the first two books in a day and a half. I just can't seem to get into this one, though. Maybe it's because I only have the chance to read it in 5 min. increments. I bet that's it. I still have high hopes for the book.

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I don't think there is anything that smells better than my sweet baby's little neck. Mmmm I nibble on it all day. Especially because he is prone to tossing his head back and letting out sad little coos all day. We call them his sad stories. Seriously.... Cutest. Thing. Ever.

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One week of school down! I think we are all starting to get used to it. Emma comes home so happy! I always ask her about something that made her happy and something that made her sad during the day. She always has 10+ happy things and never any sad ones. She did have a small meltdown Thursday night, though. I think the full-day part of Kindergarten finally caught up with her. A good nights sleep and a promise of a weekend full of snuggling mom and playing with Ali helped. Speaking of Ali, she too is getting used to the whole school thing. She has her own lunch box and own backpack and walks with Emma to the bus stop sporting both every morning. And then she comes home and follows me around calling me teacher. We have our own morning of "school", nap time and then Emma is home. Not too bad.

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The other day I had to grab a few things from the grocery store and took the three monkeys with me. The girls picked out one of those ostentatiously BIG carts. You know what I'm talking about. Huge. Noisy. Blue. As I looked at the cart chuck-full of children with some small groceries squeezed in the spare spaces in between them it struck me how much I LOVE being a mom. Oh, how that cart full of children made me happy. Life is good. So good.