Our Beloved Sea Monster

Once upon a time there were three little kiddos who really, really wanted a pet. Their parents bought them fish after fish after fish, but they just kept being flushed and flushed and flushed. They decided to ask Santa for a puppy and were quite disappointed when they discovered that there are no animals allowed on Santa's sleigh. Then they were given a tadpole. It was going to be a "great learning experience" to watch this little guy sprout legs and grow into a little frog. But the poor little guy only survived one day..... four tadpoles later these children inherited a frog from their friends. The kids lovingly named the little frog "Sea Monster." They loved to hold him and catch live crickets to feed him. The children's mother frequently found herself saying things she NEVER thought she would say such as, "stop pulling the legs off crickets and bringing them in the house!" and "Oh, what a cute little sea monster!" But overall, they didn't mind the little creature. And, you guessed it, they all lived happily ever after....

Happy Heart Day!

Our Valentines day was filled with flowers, chocolates, red, PINK and LoVe. I made these cute chair backers to put the kid's Valentines in, which Colby and the boys thought were way too girly.... you should have seen the HORRIFIED look on Ammon's face when I first showed it to him and he thought I was going to make him take it to school. Despite Colby's request to put a skull and cross bones or a "dude shooting an elk" on the front of the boy's chair backers, I went with the traditional, girly, heart.

I thought they turned out cute as can be (way cuter than if I had put a "dude shooting an elk" on the front).

Abbi loved hers.

I now have four Valentines decorations. A Valentine tablecloth and three chair backers... oh, and the latex balloons that I buy every year. Unfortunately, I didn't take any pictures of my cute little boys. They were too busy filling their little faces with Valentine candy.

Colby surprised Abbi and I with some beautiful flowers.

Abbi was reunited with her buddy Logan, who has been out of town for a couple of weeks. These two were so excited to see each other, they couldn't stop hugging and holding hands. Should I be concerned that my two year old had a Valentine "date"?

Abbi got this cute little Valentine car. Abbi has been wanting a little car like this for months. I decided I should start looking for one when she started asking if we could go to the "orange store" (Home Depot) so she could drive the cars. Before you start thinking that I am favoring Abbi, let me tell you about the incredible deal that I got on this little tykes car. It was on clearance at Target for $25- which I was pumped about. But I was even more excited when I got up to the register and it rang up for $12.40!! There are few things I get as excited about as getting a good deal.... it was totally worth the three hours it took me to assemble, with my bare hands, and a screw driver, and no help from my husband. I am so proud. I hope you all had a great Valentine's day too!

A Decade

Today Colby and I are celebrating our ten year wedding anniversary. As I was thinking about what to write to commemorate a decade of marriage, I remembered reading this on my friend Maryann's blog. I had to laugh as I read about her describing some blog posts that her friends had written about their husbands being "almost nausea inducing." I am totally guilty of this. Generally when I write about Colby it is very sappy, lovey-dovey kind of stuff because I really, really love him and I don't know how to express that without being sappy and lovey-dovey. So before I start with the "reasons why I love Colby" part of my post, I'll just throw this out there; we don't have a perfect marriage, (I know I had you all fooled). Sometimes we fight, sometimes we drive each other crazy. Colby likes to be early to things and I am incapable of being anywhere on time. I forget to reset the trip meter after I fill the van up with gas and Colby always leaves crumbs on the kitchen counter after he makes a sandwich. I love to entertain big crowds of people and Colby would rather just have a few close friends over. I don't understand his desire to own so many guns and watches, and he doesn't understand my desire to "celebrate the hell" out of birthdays and holidays. But despite all of it's imperfections, our marriage is pretty darn good. In fact, I can't imagine it being much better. I feel so blessed to be able to share my life with such a wonderful person. (yeah, I know it's getting sappy.)

Ten Reasons Why I LOVE Colby

1. He's a hottie. Hubba. Hubba

2. He has never forgotten a birthday, anniversary or Valentine's day.

3. He's a great father.

4. He still thinks fart jokes are funny.

5. He looks good in scrubs. Which is good, because that's all he ever wears these days.

6. He has great hair. Especially when he has bed head, it's adorable.

7. He makes me laugh.

8. He's a hard worker. I can't even tell you how many late nights/early mornings he puts in, and he never complains about it.

9. He loves food, particularly my food. He makes me feel like I'm a first rate chef.

10. He's so practical. In fact, he loves our mini-van because it's so practical.

There you have it. The good, the bad, the sappy, the truth. I can't wait to see what the next ten years will bring.

Crazy Texas Weather

Recently, we have discovered that the weather here in Texas can change faster than you can blink your eyes. I'm not going to lie... I kind of love it. It is a little surprise every morning when I wake up, I never know what I'm going to get. For example; here are my little rugrats on January 27th...

(I know they look like little ragamuffins).

On January 31st it cooled down a little so we had to put jackets on for our bike ride.

(the cute little blondie is Abbi's "best fwiend Oggie")

And this morning, we woke up to the fluffy white stuff. (about one inch of it, but apparently that is enough to cancel school, cancel the ward party, and cancel the boys basketball games tomorrow).

By 7 am this morning, the kiddos were out playing in the snow. It's a good thing too cause a lot of it had melted by this afternoon.

We thoroughly enjoyed our snow day. We made sugar cookies and hot chocolate. We watched movies, played Uno and Dominoes and had homemade corn chowder and breadsticks for dinner.

And while we were here enjoying our inch of snow (that was too dry to make a snowball out of), I was only mildly jealous that Colby was enjoying the greatest snow on earth in Park City today. I can't tell you how much I'd love to be skiing right now, maybe in 2 years and 5 months when we move back to Utah- but who's counting??

Just for fun

Last weekend, Colby had to work all weekend (literally ALL weekend, as in 53 of the 72 hours). The kids and I decided we needed to do something FUN to entertain ourselves while we were home alone. We started by having a campout in the playroom on Friday night.

Saturday we made homemade Kool-Aid playdough. This stuff kept my kids entertained for HOURS.

I love this stuff! It is easy to make, nice and soft and it smells good. Plus, I don't worry much if one of my kids eats it. If you want to try it here's the recipe:

Kool Aid Playdough

2 1/2 cups flour

1/2 cup salt

2 pkg Kool Aid

3 T oil

2 cups boiling water

Mix flour, salt and Kool Aid together. Add the oil and boiling water and mix well.

Encouraged

Today I came to the realization that I will never actually be "done" with my housework. It seems like just as I get the dishes and laundry done, floor swept, moped and/or vacuumed and bathrooms cleaned, I find another mess in need of cleaning.

Someone gets hungry and pours and entire box of cereal for herself, or someone climbs onto the counter to get an after school snack and leaves footprints on the counter top and cracker crumbs on the floor. Someone gets home from school and empties the entire contents of his backpack onto the living room floor (including rocks and pieces of eraser that have been fashioned into "very special" figurines.) Someone uses the bathroom and has incredibly bad aim. There is always another meal to prepare, and more dirty laundry at the end of every day.

After spending much of the day cleaning today, and I finally had the kids settled in bed, I looked around the house and found that it looked like a tornado had blown through my living room. Needless to say, I felt rather discouraged. And then I remembered this from one of my favorite conference talks:

If you are still in the process of raising children, be aware that the tiny fingerprints that show up on almost every newly cleaned surface, the toys scattered about the house, the piles and piles of laundry to be tackled will disappear all too soon and that you will—to your surprise—miss them profoundly.

Let us relish life as we live it, find joy in the journey, and share our love with friends and family. One day each of us will run out of tomorrows. President Thomas S. Monson (Oct 08)

After re-reading this message from President Monson, not only did I feel encouraged, I felt very blessed. I am so grateful for the gospel in my life that provides upliftment when I most need it. And so grateful for my husband and kids, and all of the messes that come with them.

A little NEW for our New Year

After welcoming in a New Year with nothing NEW on the horizon- we decided to make a few changes to spice up 2011.

We started with a new haircut for Abbi. This was also Abbi's first haircut. I had absolutely no idea what I was doing so I just cut a little off the bottom, just enough to get rid of that baby fuzz. (Go ahead and ignore by 10 year old sweatshirt and pajama pants).

Ta-Da! Like most two year olds, Abbi moves her head a lot. I still haven't been able to get her to sit still enough to decide if her hair is even.... I think it's pretty close.

I couldn't think of a better way to start a new year than with new paint. I started with the entryway/hallway.

Before (or I guess more accurately, during)

After

I love, love, love my new paint color. Even though I've been told that it looks like mustard, and diarrhea. I think it looks more like Hathaway Gold. :) It really brightens up my house, and the best part is, I can actually wash it.

Last, but certainly not least, Colby got some new boots. Cowboy boots to be exact.

The good news is we now have another career option should podiatry not work out. Boot model. I'll just add it to the list with Chef, Professinal soccer player and Rockstar.

New Year, New ???

We had a fantastic year in 2010, it was filled with lots of excitement and lots of change. I loved the idea of doing a photo recap and I didn't realize how busy we had been until I started trying to pick ONE picture per month.... and some months I just couldn't narrow it down. But here you have it, our year in pictures.

January

Ice Storms

February

Reunited after 5 1/2 months

March

Residency Match

Washington D.C.

April

Bought a house in Texas

May

Chicago Trip

Colby's graduation

June

Moved to Temple, Texas

Cancun

Ragnar Relay

July

Visited family in Utah

August

Back to School

September

Finished first painting project

visited family in San Antonio

October

Grandma & Grandpa Stewart came for a visit

Grandma & Grandpa Frost came for a visit

I had my appendix removed

November

We said, "goodbye" to diapers!

Hosted our first Texas Thanksgiving

December

Colby took primary/holiday call for the first time

Honestly, now that it is 2011 and I realized that I don't have ANYTHING planned this year (really, not a single vacation, move, graduation, long distance race- nothing!) I'm not really sure what I'm going to do with myself for the next 12 months. I'm excited to see what adventures this new year brings for us, but in the meantime I am going to just enjoy day to day life and be glad that I'm not constantly packing, unpacking, training, stressing, etc.