that girl

Is getting a little too sophisticated for me, and she’s not yet 4!  She is full of sass, but is also very complimentary on the other end of the spectrum… So it balances out.  One minute the conversation goes something like:

Carmen:” What are we going to do today?”

Me:”I don’t know yet.”

Carmen:”Mom, WHAT is the matter with you today?”

But then she will switch to saying “Mom, thanks for the english muffin, you are the best Mommy ever.”

or

Last night when I walked into the room after getting ready for our date to Joel McHale (which was very funny, by the way), she said “Mom, you look beautiful.”  She is such a sweet girl. For some reason, compliments from kids mean a little more, since they are always brutally honest.

She loves to change her outfit at least 4 times a day.  I usually put her in jeans for preschool, and within 30 seconds of her getting home she has got them off.  The outfits she chooses ranges from mismatched pajamas to princess dress-ups.  Which, I don’t care… as long as she doesn’t put up a stink about what she wears in public, that seems like a pretty decent compromise.

Carmen LOVES to help me in the kitchen.  As soon as she sees me in there, she grabs her little fold up chair, pushes it to the sink and says “Mom, I am going to wash my hands so I can touch food.”  She ALWAYS helps me whenever I am cooking.   I hope that she will always love to cook, the way I do.  Today I wanted to take a picture of the Mexican 7 layer dip I made for Lee’s super bowl snack (apparently it’s not super bowl Sunday without 7 layer dip…even if we are the only ones to eat it).  It just looked too pretty not to document before we tore into it.  Carmen wanted to get in on the action too because she still loves taking pictures.  So she grabbed a little disposable camera I found in a box the other day and started snapping away. 

Then she turned the camera on me.

I’m sure all of the shots on that old wind up camera will be awkward angles of me wearing no make-up and in clothes I wouldn’t prefer to be photographed in, but whatever.

My pretty girl.

Oh and here is the layer dip… If you want the recipe, it is of course from p-dub.  Her food is super fattening, but for some reason, I can’t stop making Every. Thing. I. See. on her site.  SO delish.

Ok… sorry I got a little side tracked by food.  I do that.

Back to Carmen…

She still loves babies and loves to take care of her little brother.

We often have conversations about when “she grows big”.  She can’t wait until she becomes a mommy.  That conversation usually turns to who she is going to marry BEFORE she becomes a mommy some day.  It usually goes something like this:

Carmen: “I’m going to marry Moseley when we get big”.

Me:”Well, you can’t marry your brother, because that would be against the law :)”

Carmen:”Well then I’ll just marry Daddy.”

Me:”sorry, but you cant marry Daddy either”

Carmen (crying)”why!??? Why can’t I marry Daddy!?”

Me: “because Daddy is already married to me.  You have to pick someone who is not already in our family.”

Carmen: ” Well, Ok… I pick Drew.”  (she has also picked Danny in the past, both are boys from her preschool class… ha ha)

She is such a funny little girl.  She makes my life exciting, and so happy.

Love her.

eleven months

Still cute as ever… Moseley is getting so big.  He is still the happiest boy ever.  He loves to throw his head back and do this fake hearty laugh(which you can see in the pics above), because he knows he is SO funny.  Which he is.  He is starting to learn a few little words.  Besides “Mom”, he can say ball “bah” Car “ka” and “Pup”.  It is really cute when he tries to talk because he concentrates really hard and presses his lips together so tight that when he finally says it, he kind of spits it out.

The poor guy seems to get sick all the time.  Since he has been born he has had a number of colds, and flus.  I don’t think I am really the type of mom who panics at the slightest sniffle, but that poor kid has seen the inside of a dr’s office a number of times.  Mostly because his colds get so bad that he wakes up wheezing, and I get worried about that kind of stuff.    I’m sure some of it’s from having a preschool aged sister, and he goes to the gym kids club a lot.  I just hope that he’s just building up his immune system, and not just allergic to the world.

He still hasn’t shown much interest in walking.  He has, however, shown interest in my cupboards… thankfully he is a little more distract-able than his older sister, and I haven’t had to break out all the child locks yet, like with Carmen.  Heaven knows what I’ll do if I have another toddler who is a runner/climber/terror. :)

He loves music.  When he is screaming in the car, I can usually get him to calm down if I put on one of the songs from my play list.  His favorites are lions from the features, or 3 little birds by bob marley.  He starts shaking his head back and forth and waving his little fists in the air.  It is funny.

He stopped waking me up at night a few weeks ago.  Which was a relief, because if I had a 2 year old waking up to nurse in the middle of the night… I may have had to be put in the crazy bin.  Sleep does amazing things to my outlook on life. :)  On the plus side he has developed quite the physique from all of those late night feedings…

I love this kid.  Not a day goes by where someone doesn’t stop me to tell me what a cute happy baby I have. Which is awesome because he sure does make me happy too.

someday soon I will post my birthday party pics… but we all know soon is a relative term.

island park

We headed up to west Yellowstone to a cabin in island park to spend new years with some of Lee’s family.

It was awesome.  Island park was  a winter wonderland.   Just so much snow, and pine trees for miles.  It was beautiful.

The cabin was awesome, and huge.  I got plenty of time to just sit around and read my book.  It was really relaxing.  We had some great food and fun hanging out with family.

Oh and the snowmobiling…

Lee  had a blast rallying around on the snow mobiles for a few days.

Moseley was not such a huge fan.

Carmen had a ton of fun playing in the snow.  Although she would get cold and say she wanted to go home to California.

I even went out with Lee, and we had a great time.

Even though I do not ever miss living in the cold, visiting snow is really awesome.  It is just so clean, and there is just a quiet when there is fresh powder everywhere that you can’t get anywhere else.  It is so amazing.

On the trip home we stopped at the big chair again, so that Moseley could have a turn sitting up there and feeling like a tiny baby… umm wait.

My new years resolution this year is to focus on my patience level.  I am not in THAT big of hurry to go anywhere.  I just need to step back and remember to enjoy the moment.

oh…and I am finally going to get that Giselle body I’ve been wanting.  That’s possible after 2 humongous babies, right?

snowbird

We went up to snowbird between holidays to have a little mini-getaway vacation for a few days.  Lee snowboarded and we spent the day in the spa.  It was awesome, it really helped me relax from all the stress of getting ready for christmas.  This year was really tiring for me for some reason.  Probably because Lee has been so busy with work, and I didn’t really plan ahead on any of my christmas gifts, so I felt like a big lame-o.   I really hate not giving good gifts. Especially since I like to make gifts, I think they mean more… but of course I didn’t have time to knit 10 different gifts, so… yeah.  I pretty much did nothing.

Plus Mose picked this trip to revert back to the newborn days and wake up 57 times per night.  I was running on about no sleep, so everything seemed to catch up to me.

The massage and getting my hair done was the perfect way to forget all that and start having fun.

We also got Carmen into some ski lessons.  She was so cute in her gear.  She was so chill the whole time.  She had great balance, and just kind of hung back and skied down the hill, like no big deal.  It was so awesome.

Lee may or may not have gotten a little emotional watching her get to do this.  It is pretty awesome that we can provide her with these opportunities we never had as tiny kids.  That kid has experienced more in her 3 years than I did in my whole life practically.

That night we ate at La Caille (otherwise know as fancy hooters… the waitresses all had on low-cut bustiers).   The restaurant was so pretty, and the food was yum.  They had this awesome lobster bisque,  and even the kids chicken fingers were gourmet.  It was really good.  And if that is what french food is like, well then sign me up.   I am not usually a fan of fancy resaurants because I think they are too stuffy, but this was really fun to splurge on ourselves this time.

christmas

This year for christmas we went to Utah to spend the holidays with my mom, and family.

For christmas eve we went to my grandpa and grandma’s house (well technically Uncle Mel’s house, ’till the grandparents get home from their mission)

Here is Carmen holding her cousin Kaius.

Aiden and Mose… eying each other down.

Mose and Aunt Carly

Mose and Kaius

Santa made an appearance.  Carmen was stoked…

Mose was not so sure.

After that we had the traditional Mexican food feast, and home-made Orange Julius.  We also played the christmas music chimes.  And watched a video on Jesus.  It was a really nice time, not the same without Grandma there… but still nice. :)

After that we went home and the kids got to open up their christmas jammies from Grandma.

In the morning we opened presents.

Carmen’s reaction to seeing that Santa had, in fact,  come in the night.

Moseley had no idea what was going on, but he did love ripping paper, and pretty much just destroying things in general, so I think he had fun.

His face in this next one is just priceless…

When Kaius got too hot in his jammies, Carly put him in one of Mose’s hand me down onsies… apparently she produces very thirsty babies as well.  I can’t believe it, but I think he is going to pass Moseley up.

The next day we went to Magleby’s  fresh to get some all you can eat french toast with some delicious berries and cream on top.

And then headed to the rink for some ice skating.

I didn’t even fall on my butt, so… bonus.

Can you spot grandma in this next one… how funny is she?

I didn’t even see her there when I was snapping this pic.

Josh and Carly showing of their figure skating moves… very profesh.

carmen’s first christmas Program

Here are some pics from Carmen’s preschool Christmas program.

I could not get her to put down that flower and baby, so she could do all the hand movements, but oh well.  She’s 3, what can you do?

It was still really cute, and I am ever amazed that I am old enough to have a kid in pre-school. weird.

My cute chub.

Hot mom friends.

carmie, carmie bo barmie

Even though it is just about impossible to get her to smile normally for a picture…

And just today she has already found my christmas gift stash and ruined the surprise factor for 50% of her christmas gifts…

And covered her little brother (not to mention most of the bathroom floor) from head to toe in almost an entire bottle of baby lotion…

And stuck a disney photo pass card (they look like credit cards, if you’ve never seen them before) into our computer floppy drive and said to me “Mom, I paid”…

I love her guts and  there’s nothing she can do to make me stop.

Oh you want to see what her little brother looked like after said incident?  Well I only got pictures after she had already tried to clean it up with one of my bath towels, but…

Oh and on an unrelated note…

Here is a pic I got of Mose that cracks me up.  He looks like a cartoon.

be still my heart

Will I ever get enough of this kid?  I don’t think so.

I cannot resist how he is pinching the single blade of grass between his chubby fingers in this next one.

Here he is looking dapper in his church clothes.  Bonus: you can see the teeth he has been working on for the past few months.  I think he’s made some really good progress. :) (click on the pics to see larger)

midnight with the girlies

I forgot to write about our super fun night going to see the new moon premier!

Well the same crazy girls you always see here on my blog and I went… and it was sooo much fun.

(all of these pictures are from Chantel, since I never remember to take pics when I go places… You should go see her post, it really captures the night from start to finish.)
Here are the bitten cuppy cakes I made for the occasion.  They kind of turned out looking like marshmallow peeps that got attacked by vampires… but I was too lazy to re-do them (plus it kind of still works, since we are talking about sparkly “vegetarian” vamps here, right?)

Here are those of us cool enough to dedicate prime real estate on our tees to declare our love for all things twilight.

It is not geeky at all, so stop looking at me like that.

Here is a close up of what my shirt looked like.

I have hot friends, huh?

The waiting for the movie was  more fun for me, than the actual movie.  We got there about 5 hours early to wait in the crazy line.  It sounds crazy, but for me that meant 5 kid free hours just to gab endlessly with my friends, and eat good food.  I loved it.  I liked the movie, it was a little slow, but it was twilight… so I can’t really not like it.  Plus there was lots of eye candy in it, which I appreciated.  I am excited for next year, it gives us a chance to feel like teenagers again… Which, when you have a full-time job cleaning up bodily fluids, is important for a person like me.

early christmas present

Lee surprised me with an early christmas present this year… a new camera!  I have been wanting a decent camera for a while now, but I was always too intimidated to pull the trigger.  Finally I just got so frustrated with my little dumb sloooooooow camera that I *drop kicked it and decided I wanted a nikon for christmas this year.

I have been fiddling around with it.  I am loving it.  I have basically no clue what all these knobs and buttons mean… but I plan to learn it all eventually.  Luckily I am surrounded by fantastic photographers who I can get tips from.

Here are a few test shots from bath time.  Go easy on me.  It’s my first time.

It is hard to mess up a photo when these kids are this cute though, I have to say.

*I didn’t actually drop kick it.  I really just plan to just let Carmen use it, since she is the photog in the family.