Friday, December 3, 2010

November News

As you know, November is birthday central around our house. We started off the month with Cody turning 4 years old. He wanted to go to Jump On It for his party. And then we topped it off with lunch at Canya Junia (otherwise known as Carls Jr.) He is such a fun kid to have in our family. He is always keeping us laughing. He is also one of the sweetest little kids I know. He is so loving and helpful. Every night he comes out of his room and says, "Mom, can I tell you something?" I say yes and he goes on to say something like, "You are a very nice Mom and I love it when you play with me. That's all, I love you." Sometimes he adds in something extra if we did something fun together that day. But he always comes out to tell me he loves me. How can you get mad at a kid for getting out of bed when he comes to tell you that every time. What a sweetie!



Next came Shelby's birthday on the 19th. For her party she wanted to invite Elsa and Mindi over for a dress up party. We painted nails, did makeup, made crafts, and ate pumpkin pie. It was a lot of fun. Darcy was sleeping during the party. When she woke up she decided she would like to paint her nails too. Of course she chose the hot pink color and decided to paint them on our living room carpet. (I was photographing a wedding and James was downstairs working on our fireplace at the time). Now we have pretty pink carpet! Yeah...

We are in the middle of a home improvement project. The US government is giving a tax rebate on new high efficiency wood burning stoves. We have wanted one for our basement and decided to take advantage of the rebate while we can. So we've been building our fireplace downstairs. We had to use steel studs and concrete board for the walls. James loves trying new things, so this was a fun challenge for him. Here's a picture of James and his brother Ben cutting the steel studs.
Over the Thanksgiving weekend we finished up the walls and laid the slate tile. Joe and Ben came to help. It was great to have them there. We got all the tiles laid and will grout this coming weekend. Here is what the fireplace looked like just after we finished laying the tiles. I am so excited with the way it turned out. It looks better now that I have cleaned it up, but I'll wait to post the final picture after we have grouted this weekend.


Dallin's birthday was on November 27th. He decided what he would like most for his birthday was to go rock climbing as a family. So here are some pictures from our rock climbing party at The Quarry.







The weather has been very cold lately. The kids loved the first good snow storm we had. They made a mini snow man that was very cute.

November was a fun an busy month, like it always is. I had a wedding and some family pictures to take. The cold weather is always a challenge when it comes to photography, but the pictures turned out great, even if my fingers were numb afterwards. My hip has been bothering me a lot the last few months. I am going to go see a specialist about it and hopefully find something that can help it feel better.
The other day Cody said something cute. My hip was hurting a lot at the time and he really wanted me to go downstairs with him so he could watch a different movie than the one we were watching upstairs. I told him I wasn't going to go downstairs because my hip hurt too bad. He kept begging me to go downstairs. After saying no several times I said, "Cody, how am I supposed to put a movie on for you downstairs if I am not going to go downstairs?" He thought for a second and then said, "If you were Elastagirl, you could stay up here and just reach downstairs and put the movie on for me!" What a cute and creative little kid. If only I had Elastagirl's powers!!!

2 comments:

Sandra Nixon said...

I really love the pics and the stories. I didn't know anything about your new fireplace, it looks fantastic!! I am really excited to see it when i come. Now that you have that done you will probably get the itch to finish the whole basement so it all looks as amazing as the fireplace! great post.

Party of Five said...

Had a similar artist in my family a few months ago and windex seemed to work the best on the carpet! We got most of it out except the large piles she left, BOSS carpet cleaners got that out later! I think I did the same thing to my Mom's cedar chest so I figured it was karma! AHHHH!

Funny Quotes

  • Darcy came up to me the other day with a permanent marker and said, "Mom, is it okay if I use this pregnant marker to draw a picture?" January 2012
  • Darcy was in a bubble bath the other day having a great time. She made a beard out of bubbles and put bubbles on her head to make herself look like Santa. When it was time to clean off the bubbles I parted the bubbles to get down to the clear water and she said, "Oh, I didn't know there was water down there!" December 2011
  • Darcy calls hangnails or snags on her nails "Pinchies". She says "Mom, can you get this pinchie off my toe?"
  • Whenever we do something fun Darcy always says, "Lets to dat adain." I love her little voice when she says it.
  • Every morning Cody comes into my room while I'm still in bed and tells me, "Mom, it's light outside. It's time to get up." To which I reply, "Okay, let me get dressed." So now when Cody is getting dressed and I call to him his response is, "I'm getting my dressed on!" I love it. No more getting dressed at our house...its now know as "getting our dressed on".
  • I like to make fruit smoothies for breakfast sometimes. Cody calls them Smoot Moolies, so that has become the name for them at our house. The other day when I was making a smoot moolie Cody asked if he could help me make it. I said he could so he jumped up on the counter and picked up a banana. He proceed to peel it and then handed me the peel and said,"Here's the armpit mom." I wasn't sure if I heard him right so I asked him what it was called. He said, "The armpit...you know the thing that the banana is in." November 2009
  • This afternoon when we were driving to the store I had a funny conversation with Cody. “Does Matt have a house?” Cody asked. “Well, Matt is here to buy a new house.” I replied. “Ooooo, that sounds fun!”Cody said. About a minute passes and then he says “How is he going to carry it?” I’m trying my hardest not to laugh. “I think he needs a big rope.” Cody said, happy that he figured out a good solution to the problem. I just love Cody…he keeps me laughing all the time. January 21, 2010
  • I was really tired one afternoon so I flopped down on the couch and said, "I'm pooped out!" Cody came over and snuggled up to me on the couch and said, "I'm having poop time too!" July 2009
  • When I told the kids that James was going to be going to California, Cody sat up straight and excitedly said, "Like Lightening McQueen! He went to California!" October 2009
  • The other day James said to Cody, "How's my buddy?" Cody got a very serious look on his face and said, "Name's Tody!" (He still can't pronounce C's very well.) The only things he will let us call him, other than his name, is big boy or funny kid.
  • When we were first potty training Cody he said he needed to go to the bathroom during sacrament meeting at church. So I took him to the bathroom and sure enough he did his business in the toilet. This was one of the first times he ever did poops in the toilet so he was really excited. When we walked back into sacrament meeting (we were sitting near the front of the chapel) he loudly proclamed "Daddy, I did giant poops in the toilet!" December 2008
  • Cody comes up with cute names for things. Mostly because he has troubles prononcing some of his letters. Some of my favorite names are "Daddy's Toke-Toke" for Coke, "Dr. Seuse" for Dr. Pepper, the "lurnal" for urinal, and "peanutbutter jam" for peanutbutter mixed with honey in a bowl.
  • Shelby had a hard time saying her G's when she was little. So we were working with her on how to say Grandma. She could make a growling sound pretty well, so we we had her growl then say grandma, so she used her best growling voice to say "GRRRR AMA"
  • The sun was shining in Cody's eyes the other day and he pointed at it and said, "Mommy, that circle is burnin' my eyes!" January 2009
  • Heres a list of funny words our kids have come up with for things: Fwaps (Cody's word for patting Darcy's back), bednight snacks, square noodles (ramen noodles), peeps, giant poops, dishwasher (Cody says this is where we wash clothes), low-low (lawn mower), regular grandma (Shelby's way of describing the difference between Great Grandma and her (regular) Grandma, oopadaisy (Shelby)
  • When we were building our house Shelby and Dallin spent a lot of time here with me working on it. One day when I was putting up the finish trim I couldn't find the hammer. I was looking all over for it and just didn't have any luck finding it. Shelby (2 yrs old) made two fists with her little hands and said, "It's okay Mommy, you can use my bammers!" November 2005
  • When Dallin was 1 yr old, he used to love making car noises. His favorite noise to make was the sound of tires screeching and then a crash. So EVERY time we would apply the brakes in the car we would hear his little voice from the back seat..."errrr kshhhh"
  • When Dallin was about 3 years old, he always liked to sit between James and I on the couch. But his way of saying it was cute. He would say "Can I sit in the tween of you?"
  • When Dallin was about 4 years old, I let him and Shelby skip naps because we needed to go somewhere. As we were driving on the road Dallin said, "Wow, look at all these people who are skipping naps too!" I guess he thought everyone had naps during the afternoon! Summer 2005