Hey Jenny!

It's not really about Jenny, but I thought I would just jump on the naming a post after Jenny bandwagon.

I've had a lot going on the last week or so. What can I say....I'm busy! <--That was me yelling. Anyway, I thought I would calm down and share a bit of it with you. Dwight and I decided to host a last minute New Year's Eve party. Surprisingly none of our friends had plans. I don't know if it was because they were all holding out on us planning a party, or if it is because they are all losers. But, they all came over around 7:00 with mounds of food. (It was a potluck. I know I have a rule about not eating at potlucks, but these people are all clean. The rule applies to dirty people. So if you are wondering why I don't eat your potluck food, it is because you are dirty.) We locked all the kids up in the bonus room with their own food. Which was pretty much chips and water. They were all pretty good about staying up there and not coming down until 30 seconds before midnight. So we got all the kids settled in, then layed out our spread and got to work eating. We played a billion different games and tried our darndest to start fights with each other. It came kind of close when we were playing the Newlywed Game. The question was to the guys, and asked, "looking at all the wives present, which one would you say is the meanest and toughest." All but one chose me. I decided to not be offended and that it is probably because all the other wives are slight pushovers..... and I am super strong. There was a running joke going on through the night about a local weatherman. He happens to be in someones ward, and for some reason was the answer to every trivia question we didn't really have the answer to. Just as everyone was getting ready to go, a commercial came on with that weatherman. We had to pause it and get a picture of us with him. Since he was pretty much at our party too. In spirit, anyway. Bailey volunteered to take the picture, and we have a crappy camera, and we have a crappy tv, but here we all are.

After New Year's I got a special visit from this BFC. She braved the roads to travel all the way up to Idaho for ME!! That's way bigger a deal than traveling for 4 hours through sunny California roads. In case you were wondering. We had a great time. Dwight took the kids shooting with my dad on Friday. Anna and I saw a movie one night. We highly recommend it! We checked out the sales at Sam's Club, went out to dinner with some family, played games. Dwight took the older boys snowboarding on Saturday and Anna and I took the rest of the kids to see Beverly Hills Chihuahua. Awesome!!! Micah almost gave it away, but it was sooo awesome, it would have been good anyway. Just ask Ella and Howie. They have great taste in movies. Another one of their favorites are the Look Who's Talking series. Anyway, it all ended too quickly. Thanks for coming up Butler's!
Today, life had to get back to normal. The party is over. I went from a houseful to just me and Howie. Here's a sampling of what we did with our time today.

Happy New Year to all and to all a good night!

Bean Bags, Trash Bags, and Dirty Underwear

About 5 years ago we bought one of those GIANT bean bags. I think they're called love sacks. But it wasn't your typical GIANT bean bag, it was THE BIGGEST one they make. It was well used. For several months it was even used as a child gate for our family room. When we moved into our bigger house a couple years ago we put the bag in the bonus room. There it was totally abused by every kid that ever stepped foot into that room. Lately the zipper has been coming undone and it creates a huge mess. The kids don't ever tell me the zipper is open until it is to the point of foam everywhere. Well, with it being Christmas break, the kids have been sleeping in the bonus room every night, and they have been staying up later and later. The other night I went up there to shut them up and try to get them to go to bed. When I walked in the room I about had a stroke. The zipper to the bean bag was completely broken off and the crap was EVERYWHERE!!!!!
I freaked out, and then made them all get up and help me clean it up. We decided it was time to throw the thing out. But the foam padding stuff inside was all staticky and there was just so much of it. You can see from these pictures how terrified my kids were of me....

Howie was all smiles the whole time, no matter who was yelling at him.

Can you believe I threw out the bag and not the kids?

We ended up sewing up the bag and filling 8 giant trash bags with foam. We were filling buckets then dumping them into the bags. It took about 2 hours!

The next day Dwight tipped the trash men when they came to take it away. I will no longer be endorsing this product.

Other than that, it has been a pretty mellow and relaxing break. I decided though I am obviously ignoring my kids a little too much, when Howie came downstairs dressed in this Saturday.

His face is filthy, he's wearing a shirt 2 sizes too small, I'm pretty sure that's the same underwear from the bean bag pictures several days before, and he's got snowboarding boots on. At least he looks happy.

My blog post

Now that Landee is back, I guess I can post again.

I have been freakishly busy these days. Here are some of the many things I had intentions of accomplishing, and it didn't all quite work out.

* Family pictures
* Make Christmas cards
* Make a photo book, so Mark could tell you all about his
* Clean my house
* Clean my car
* Prepare a lesson for RS
* Blog about it (whatever "it" is)
* Catch up on my CSI Miami's (Better than Saved by the Bell)
* Blog about the Bailey Christmas party (thanks mom for taking care of that one)

Really I could go on, but it starts to get a little personal...
So let's check a few of these things off.

*We did get the family pictures taken care of. Last week at Sam's Club they had a special for $9.95 you could get a 10x13. I went for it. We had to be at Sam's Club at 5:15 on Friday. Right in the middle of the store. Sitting there in our groovy poses. I couldn't stop laughing. Especially the pose he did of Dwight and I alone. It was very similar to our engagement announcement picture. I'll have to do some serious digging for it to show you all. But just picture in your head the two of us laying on the floor. He told me to "lay like a mermaid". People were stopping their shopping to watch. Good thing no more than 10 people ever shop at Sam's Club at any given time.

*I am going to count my Christmas card as this one. All I have to say is...you're welcome.
About the photo book, Mark, I'm never going to get around to it, so feel free to post about your trip to Seattle...if you want...no pressure.

*Clean my house, clean my car? It's totally snowing, it will just get all dirty again so what's the point. We did have a family contest yesterday. We divided the house into sections and had a race. Whoever got their section finished first (and it had to be done well) was the winner. they won a carton of ice cream and there were no rules on when or how much they cold eat of it. You should have seen these kids move. It was a Christmas miracle. It is our new Saturday plan.

*Prepare a lesson for RS. This one I put off until the very last minute, and thanks to some great ideas from my mom, who had the lesson the week before, it wasn't too bad. I think I work best under pressure anyway. No one cried, so it wasn't that great of a lesson I guess. Next month I will totally get on the ball.....maybe not. Just incase, pay attention again mom.

*Blog about "it"....what do you call this.

*Catch up on my CSI Miami shows. CSI Miami is the grooviest show ever. Dwight was going to delete them all too. But, then I reminded him of their extreme grooviness and he let us keep them. I suggest you all try it out. Horatio is the biggest dork and he thinks he is the shiz nit. Horrible actors and bad scripts, huge crimes being solved within a day and the perp always confesses. Just like Scooby Doo. You won't be disappointed.

I feel so much better with my list being all checked off now. I have been busy with many Christmas parties. I did come up with the best white elephant gift ever. I made several of them and brought the same thing to every party. It is my own homemade version of this.

Here is mine.

It looks so much better with unmatching sleeves don't you think. It really just makes it pop! I am now accepting all orders. Only $12.95 plus shipping and handling! They're going fast so order now!

I can't decided what to title this

I don't know what has been going on lately. All I know is that I can't keep up with it. I have had something going on every night for what seems like forever. And a million things going on everyday for forever. And now it is almost Christmas and I have hardly anything done for it. I keep having dreams that it is Christmas morning and I remember I still haven't gotten my kids or Dwight anything and it is majorly stressful. But, I am taking time out of my never ending schedule to do a quick post.
I gave Howie 2 quarters the other day. He put them in his pocket and said he was going to save them for the snack machine at the YMCA. Then when he went to bed, he decided he had to sleep in his clothes. He had the quarters in his pocket and he didn't want to lose them. I guess he felt that it was safest to just keep them in his pocket and sleep in his clothes. The next morning he wouldn't let me change his clothes either. He had 2 quarters in his pocket.... I was running late, and decided I didn't really care what he wore to the YMCA. When we got there, he was missing one of his quarters. All that work, and he still lost one. I gave him another and all was well. That night, at about 3 in the morning, Howie woke me up all excited. He found his other quarter and he wanted to know if we could go back to the YMCA and get some fruit snacks.
Yesterday Ella and I were out getting a couple things when she saw this:

She thought it was the funniest thing ever and was begging me to buy it for Dad. Little did she know, her dad would probably love it!

My last little thing going on is really more like a complaint. Everyone keeps using my toothbrush! Once I find out it has been in someone else mouth I am no longer able to use it. I go to brush my teeth, and I notice my toothbrush is wet, when it should be dry because it has been several hours since I used it. Ella has used it, Calvin used another one, then I caught Howie using one. I went out and bought several more and decided to hide the extras. When I got up the next morning my toothbrush was out of its spot and resting on Dwight's sink, and it was wet!! I had to break out my spare one. Then when Dwight came in I got on to him about using my toothbrush. I went on to tell him how disgusting I thought it was and how I had to get a new one out. I guess I offended him because when he came back in the bathroom he started going on about me using his sink and mirror and how sick that was and now he was going to have to have it all replaced. Am I the only one that can't share a toothbrush? Is it me with the problem? Where's Memzy?

A Public Apology

My friend Jeni says I always love to make her look like an idiot. Since I know I only sometimes like to make her look like an idiot, I thought I should apologize for making her feel like I always do it.

I'm super sorry Jeni!!!!!!

(I'm not doing this for everybody, so if you have a beef, save your breath)

This is us getting ready to watch Twilight.


Edward....
******Edit******
I am apologizing to Jeni for saying she didn't really love Edward.

False Advertising? You tell me.

I was having a busy day. Howie was hungry (and so was I). I decided to just run through the drive thru somewhere. I am trying to decide what to order, when I saw these. Don't they look delicious?

Here's what mine looked like.

I tried to mash the sides together, but it just fell open again.

Here is it mushed, with a single bite taken out of it.

Should I have demanded my $1.99 back?

November in a nutshell

Sometimes I kind of suck at blogging. But, I am at peace with it so that's all that matters. I decided to just do one long post about what's been going on. First of all, Howie got a tie. Big news huh?

He actually stole it from Bailey, but he looks so cute in it, I had to throw it in for big news.
We had a great Thanksgiving. Jenny and Erin came up for it. I had dinner with my in-laws and my assignment was the mashed potatoes. Lot of pressure huh? I put a bunch of kids to work pealing the potatoes. Isn't this the cutest little potato peeler you've ever seen?

My favorite thing about going to my in-laws is the card games. My mother in-law always has new ones for us to play. Dwight's family is also VERY competitive and so it is a lot of fun. This is a pre-game shot. Not everyone looks so happy after the game. Good times.....

This is me concentrating on my next move. You have to be very careful not only which card you play, but which reaction you are going to use. If you win and one of the more competitive people lose, then you can't cheer for yourself unless you want a knife in your back. If you lose and one of the more competitive people win and you don't cheer for them, you could end up with a knife in your back. If you accidentally smile when a more competitive person isn't doing so well, then you could end up with a knife in your back. It makes it very fun and exciting.

Dwight's brother is leaving on a mission tomorrow, so he spent the majority of the time snuggled up with his cute girlfriend. I felt so bad for her when it was time for them to say good bye. Hopefully she really does wait for him, I like her a lot.

Me and my family had a lot of fun hanging out. We got to see Landee and ManicMandee. We played lots of games, and saw movies, and ate, and drank diet coke, and got sick, and ignored the kids........it was the best time ever! Here is the briefest moment of non-ignoring going on.

Ella gets loads of kisses from aunt Sara.

Look how Francy does even care that Jenny is licking her face. There was obviously a lot more that has happened in the past two weeks, but some things are private!