Kaleb's Birthday and More!

Kaleb's birthday was last month and this year he wanted a hot wheel's party and wanted friends to come. (He had been talking for months about having a hot wheel's party) Anyway, here is his hot wheels party! He had a blast with all his friends! Thanks everyone for coming!

All the kids waiting for their turn to hit the pinata.

I'm not sure how Kaleb ended up not sitting next to the cake! hahaha!

Kaleb's "Hotwheel cake!" I cheated and bought a car mold.

Kaleb showing us how old he is! I had to use a ton of food coloring to get the blue that blue that the next day you can guess what color Kaleb's poop was! (He had to show us.)

Kaleb had another get together with our family at my mom's house that Sunday. Thanks for having us over and for the present!


So on Sunday I was trying to get everyone in the car when Kaleb comes to me smiling. . . I think he is missing Mitch's mustache and beard!


One of the reasons I haven't posted in quite a while is that our computer got a virus and had to be taken in to get repaired. It was gone for two week! When we got it back, the company gives an invoice along with upgrades they suggest. He listed one thing only which surprised me. . . until I read it. "Get a new computer!" hahaha Anway, I had extra time because I didn't have a computer to do my work (so nice!) so I spent some time teaching Kaleb how to play "Settlers of Catan!" He's gotten pretty good! He never does what I tell him to do. All he wants to do is buy "mystery" cards and guess what! He has won 3 out of 4 times that we've played with him!I made the board smaller and play to only 7 points to try to make the game go faster, but Kaleb was really upset when he won! He wanted to play longer! Notice all the development cards he has!

Here is a picture of Kaleb's and Kayden's new room! They are using the same bunk bed that my sister,Andrea, and I used when we were kids!

We are making his bedroom into a beach theme room. Mitch's sister's family gave us some awesome decoration straight from Hawaii for Christmas. I still need to put them up!

Talk about random pictures, eh!

Life in a Nutshell

Where to begin. . . Is it already January?!?

RECAP:
Halloween was fun--Kaleb was Iron Man and Kayden was a monkey. We went trick-or-treating at Mitch's work & the mall! Thought we'd stop by on the way home to check something out and were surprised that even grownups were trick-or-treating there. If you want to see some crazy outfits, this is the place to go! We were going to do some more trick-or-treating but Kayden fell asleep so that was the end.

We passed final inspections the day before Halloween and moved in the following Saturday--THANK YOU so MUCH to all of those who helped us move in. We are excited to be out of my mom's basement and living near my little sister. . . I'm not too sure if she is excited though! :) We are also in the same ward and visiting teaching companions.

Between moving in, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years, my birthday(thanks to the birthday emails and calls!), and many other family birthday's, we were still able to find time to get away. We were able to go to two weddings in Mesa--my cousins and my husband's cousin's daughter! Both happened to be in the same city and just a day apart. We also were able to spend time with my family, and Mitch's family for Christmas--Thank you Shan & Dave for having us over! We were also able to get away for our anniversary which is just 3 days before Christmas--thanks Ciara for babysitting!
The weather in Mesa was so nice. Swimming in November. . .


During the month of November, Mitch's work had a mustache contest for prostate cancer awareness. He was super faithful to that mustache--he didn't even shave for the weddings! :( I'm sure our new ward thought Mitch was a little weird. . . or an ex-convict.



Well that's been our life in a nutshell! Hope you all had a Merry Chrismtas and a happy New Year's!

Tagged

Taga Roosky

Jamie Tagged Me

8 TV Shows I Love to Watch:
1: The Office
2: Heroes
3: Fringe
4: Life
5: Chuck
6: Smallville
7: Lost
8: Looking forward to that one with Christian Slater (we don’t have satellite so all shows we watch have to be online!)

8 Things That Happenend Yesterday (or didn’t!)
1: My Garage door didn’t get put in when it should have.
2: My HVAC guy postponed and won’t come until Monday.
3: Our faucets got put in!
4: Mortgage interest rates jumped! :( (I know half of this list is all about the house, but that consumes most my life right now!)
5: Kaleb went to preschool.
6: Did Laundry
7: Got dressed in a Halloween costume because
8: I subbed for bonko which was at my sister’s house

8 Favorite Places to Eat (Not in any particular order)
1: Cafe Rio (I love the chicken burritos!)
2: Outback
3: Zupas
4: Carrabas
5: Olive Garden
6: Any Italian restaurant
7: And Any good steak place
8: My dad’s house in Venezuela

8 Things I'm Looking Forward To
1: Our house being finished
2: A trip to Hawaii
3: Having my own house
4: Christmas
5: Unpacking things that have been packed for over a year
6: Time to read and relax
7: My own yard with a fence!
8: Kayden getting potty trained (waiting until the house is finished…)

8 Things on My Wish List
1: sod and a fence
2: a new computer (our computer is 7 year old which is ancient in technology years!)
3: 10 hours of sleep without kids waking me up
4: Kaleb and Kayden to never fight
5: More time
6: Refinish my old piano
7: a perfect mango
8: that my twin sisters would come visit!

8 People I Tag
1: Sidni
2: Carolina
3: BriAnne (I know it’s not fair since I didn’t do the one you tagged me on! But, this one was easier! Hahaha)
4: Jeanie
5: Valerie Dye (I still need to add you)
6: Valerie (formerly Lancaster) (And I still need to add you!)
7: Andrea Ross (And you too!)
8: Anyone else who is reading this.

Thanks Andrea for inviting me to Bonko Night! Kaleb and Kayden weren't too happy with me being a witch. . . I don't know why! It isn't really much of a change from what I normally am! :) Kaleb said, "I don't want a witch in the family!" and Kayden says it all in the picture. He looks like he is going to have a mental breakdown!

Crazy Kids

Kaleb has gone to preschool a total of four times and he is already trying to hitch a ride home with people! So I went to pick up Kaleb and before I got there he had asked Sidni Nielson (Kaleb's friend's mom--and my friend) if he could hitch a ride home! I wish I was there to hear him say that! I don't use the word "hitch" so it really cracked me up. . . ."hey, can I hitch a ride with you guys?" This is a preschooler!

Sidni asked the teacher how Tanner and Kaleb were doing on being quiet, and the teacher said they did really good that day and that she didn't even have to split them up! What!? She has been having to split them up because they are so noisy! It can't come from me. I was super shy. . must come from Mitch... Oh wait. Mitch was so shy and quiet that he ended repeating preschool!

Anyway, Kayden has been having fun sticking things in places. A few months ago it was potatoes. He found where I put them and would take them and hide them. I would find them all over the house. If something was starting to stink, I new it had to be a potato somewhere. Lately he has been more interested in the toilet and the oven. Kayden once got all my rolls of toilet paper and stuck them in the toilet and put them back in the drawer! I only knew that he had dipped them in the toilet because he left four rolls in the toilet. Apparently there was not enough room for all 12 rolls so put them back in the drawer dripping wet. Yesterday we had another fun incident! Kaleb brought home from preschool bread dough (his teacher is so fun!). I turned the oven on and stuck it in, and when it was done I had another surprise-- A melted glop (previously a magnetic toy ball) on the bottom of the oven. Apparently magnets can melt!
I thought I'd include in the picture of what the ball use to look like. The upside is that it was fairly easy to clean up--except for the wax that was all over the racks.

Well. . . All you with only babies now have something to look forward to!

Here are a couple of pictures of Kayden, Kaleb, and their cousin Alex.

Venezuela

On September 2nd we got back from Venezuela. The kids and I, and my little sister Andrea and her little boy, went with no husbands for two weeks to visit my dad. I have to say that it was no vacation; just a ton of work! I did come back with a greater appreciation for Mitch though!
Here are a few thing that happened while there:

We were able to visit my "Abuela." I hadn't seen her for 3 years and Kayden had never met her. Although her memory is basically gone (she didn't know who we were), it was still nice to see her again.While there, one of my dad's dogs died, a macaw escaped (but later caught again) and we had two encounters with these snakes--one killed one of my dad's parrots--Roberto. All events were very unusual. In fact, my dad had never seen any snakes before on his property.
Poor Roberto. He was the most talkative parrot. They were just too late to save the parrot--they found the snake coiled around the bird.My dad killed both of the snakes--Andrea and I felt so bad for them.


While there we stayed at this place where there were iguanas everywhere!
I love this picture. After my dad put sunblock on himself he asked if he had any white on him, and of course we said no. Right after I took this picture, I just couldn't contain it any longer and started laughing! My dad felt so stupid--when I say he cares about his appearance a lot, that is an understatement!
Below are some random pictures:
I was trying to take a picture of the "ranchos." (I think they are called shanties?) There are actually a lot more places where the ranchos are even more saturated but my pictures didn't turn out. It is funny though that if you drive by close you'll see that they all have tv's and many have satelites.
"Papi" and me (with my eyes half closed.)

Papi and Geraldine (his wife.)
Andrea and Luke (or "Catire" as everyone there would call him).

Our plane rides with the kids were the worst of all. Especially the ones on the way home. We actually got stuck in the plane leaving from Venezuela for an hour and a half because the Venezuelan army wanted to check each and every single suitcase. Why? Who knows! That's Venezuela for you! I'm just glad I packed all my valuable stuff on my carry on bags! The situation in Venezuela gets worse every year. While in the airport, we met with a couple of pilots who told us that last year he was riding in a taxi when a couple of Venezuelans also in the taxi started fighting with the driver. Apparently the taxi driver was off course. The driver had been bribed 50,000 dollars to kidnap foreigners! No surprise here though--my ex step-mother was kidnapped once and my sisters have had many threats. Anyway, "Viva Venezuela!" hahaha

Preschool

All summer long I've been trying to get Kaleb excited to go to preschool but failed. When ever I would mention preschool he would say he hated it and was not going to go. Even just seeing a paper about his preschool on my fridge, he flipped out--he took it down and crumpled it up. He was very adamant that he would not be going to preschool ever. Well the day came and as you can see on his face, he was not happy.
I have to admit that I was a bit scared of what his reaction would be when I had to go, but to my surprise he just looked at me and said, "bye Mom!" When I went to pick him up, I asked his teacher how he did and she told me that Tanner (his friend) and Kaleb are really good friends and then she did that hand signage of them just talking all the time. . . Now I have to worry that he'll be a trouble maker! Oh well! I'm just glad he loves preschool.

Summer Days

A couple of Saturdays ago we hung out with Nate & Sidni's family and had lunch at Salem Pond & let the kids have fun in the water. The kids had a blast!

Maddix & Kayden just chillin' together!

Classic picture of Kayden. He always has his face like this as if he were saying, "what you lookin' at me fo!" We even captured this expression in his passport picture.

Mitch and Nate posing for us. Sidni and I thought it was so funny that they were both standing the same-- and that they both had white shirts on. . . or so it appeared that way!

Nate & Mitch thought they'd be cool and swim across the pond. I started wondering what was so interesting on the other side because they were there forever but found out that it was because they were too tired to swim back! They finally made it back--they walked a little ways to where they thought would be a shorter swim back.

Kaleb wanted to go swim to his daddy, but didn't make it far!

Later that night, we lit Nate & Sidni's leftover sparklers. Kaleb & Tanner thought they'd try to catch a basketball on fire but didn't have any success. Thanks Sidni & Nate for hanging out with us losers! :)