Dancing and Snakes

Lily had her very first experience on stage last weekend. Her clogging class performed at a Winter Carnival.
Here she is, all ready to go. The hands on hips pose was her idea.
As was taking a picture of her doing the first move of her dance.
I didn't know what to expect--she was super duper pumped when I told her she got to do her dance on stage--but I was wondering if when it actually came to getting up in front of a bunch of strangers she would change her mind and think it was a little scary. Well, I was pleasantly surprised. Apparently we have a little performer in the family. She did all the right moves and had a huge grin on her face the entire time. Right before they went on stage I said, "Ok, are you guys ready?" And Lily jumped up and down and squealed. She loved every minute of it! Her teacher thinks she did perfect, but her teacher may be a little biased being her mother and all. :)

After the performance, the girls wanted to look at the snake exhibit they had there. I was both surprised and disgusted that Annie had no reservation about petting this 15 ft gigantimo yucky snake.
Are you grossed out? Yeah, me too.

My little klepto

We've had an issue arise with stealing. Objects of interest: miniature kitties and jewels.

The first crime was committed at Aunt Krissy's house. Brooklyn couldn't find her tiny little cat anywhere. They looked high and low--meanwhile Lily was playing carefree with legos. Then Krissy asked Lily if the kitty may have accidentally got in her pocket. Lo and behold! It had jumped right in there, along with a myriad of other tiny little jewels. Imagine that!

Thereafter I gave Lily a talk about how we don't take things without asking-- that's stealing, and when you take people's things it makes them sad blah blah blah ....apparently that talk went in one ear and out the other.

A few days later we were at my sister's house and we were all chatting in the living room, when Lils came downstairs from playing, and awkwardly put something in her coat pocket...and giggled "I just need to put something in my coat." Um, red flag.

So Eric went and checked her pockets and she was in possession of 2 tiny charms, and 2 miniature kitties. The charms were from Aunt Melissa's house, the kitties were from Grandma's house--where she had been earlier that day.

Here's one of the kitties:
Now can you blame the girl? That kitty is dang cute! And anything miniature is kind of irresistible!

Everyone seems to be getting a real kick out of this except for me! I admit the common theme of miniature kitties and jewels is somewhat humorous...but what's next? Lip gloss from Target? Prom dresses? Cars?

Any suggestions? (Besides frisking her every time we leave someone's house--that one's already in effect.)

We've had a rough day

Just being productive

Eric celebrated his birthday about a week ago, and you know what that means. New motto! "31...Getting things done." He's so committed to this motto that he checked out a book from the library called.....Getting Things Done.

He's true to his motto--in a short 9 days of being 31, he's already set up our new office desk and helped transfer all our stuff over.
And he helped me re-cover our kitchen chairs. This has been on my list of things to do for like a year. They were seriously so nasty before. I am loving 31 already.
(Next, we paint our chairs and table yellow. I'm not interested in any nay-saying in this matter. Only support.)

Sweet! It's only the best motto ever.

Cuteness and Weirdness

I can't even take Annie's cuteness lately. I just want to squeeze her and take a big, huge bite out of her cheek.
I'm kinda having a problem with the fact that she's growing up, though. Like when I got the camera out to take a picture of her playing in the silverware and she leaned over like this and said "cheeeth" ("cheese" with a lisp, if you didn't get that). What the? I don't like this getting big idea one bit.

Another sign she's growing up-- her hair has finally grown enough to be in the mullet stage, and she insists on wearing her tutu with her ballet jammies to bed.


Seriously though?? Wanna bite the cheeks right off.

One funny little thing about Annie is that since she was like 9 months old, she's always had a mysterious teeny tiny scab on her nose. I don't mean the same scab- one will heal up and then suddenly she will have another one. A while back I was like, Eric- is that a scab or a freckle on Annie's nose? And Eric was like-I think it's a freckle. That's how much of a permanent fixture this is on Annie's face. We actually thought she had a cute little freckle on her nose, but upon closer observance we have concluded she always has some sort of scratch on her nose. Seriously! Always! Super weird. Double weird- I've never seen it in a freshly scratched phase, just healed scab form. Anyway, you can see it in this picture.Other pictures to prove my point: (You may not be able to see unless you click to blow them up.)

Very curious, indeed.

Love this

If you haven't ever seen this, do yourself a favor and watch it. If it doesn't make you laugh, you're a freak. :)

Debbie Downer

I feel like I came off all whiney and complainy in my last post. Let me clarify. I just thought the timing of all the sickness and calamity in our family was so freaky that it became almost humorous. Hopefully it came off that way.
Don't worry, I get that we're pretty dang lucky that the extent of our problems are the flu, missed Fiesta bowls, and dislocated shoulders.

Grateful for my sassy little 4 year old that got a sassy new haircut to match.

Grateful for my little chubster that makes herself a bed while watching Sesame Street, and just ate a whole tube of chapstick.
Grateful for a hubster that reads to his girls, complete with bear voices and all.And freaked out that Annie looks identical in those last two pictures.

It's the crap crappiest time of the year

It’s the poop poopiest time of the year
There’ll be parties for attending
Where everyone’s getting
Some strain of the flu
It’s the poop poopiest time of the year

It’s the crap- crappiest season of all
No Christmas cards in the mail
Cause I’m looking pale
Sick in my bed
It’s the crap crappiest season of all

(Chorus - sung to marshmellows for roasting part)
There will be Christmas dinner
But we are all thinner
Cause none of us can eat anything
Eric’s got a Fiesta bowl ticket,
But he can’t even use it
He’s home on the couch barfing.

It’s the most stinkiest time of the year
Eric’s sick for my birthday
We can’t go on a date
Or do anything at all
It’s the most stinkiest time of the year

(Chorus)
There’ll be ice for slipping
And shoulders for dislocating
and chipping your shoulder blade
There’ll be earaches for getting
And noses for dripping
And sicky children all night and day.

It’s the crap crappiest time…..
Of the year!

Disclaimer: I really do LOVE the holidays. I just had to do something to laugh about our crazy last couple of weeks. My mom slipping on the ice and going to the emergency room yesterday was definitely the straw on the camel's back! When I'm upset I write poetry, OK?! ;) (just joshing, I really don't. Not that there's anything wrong with that.)

Yay for Christmas!

Lils got a Pinky Pie pony and a Build a Bear bunny rabbit for Christmas. This is the conversation I heard between Pinky Pie and Jacey the bunny, coming from the back seat in the car yesterday. I missed the first part, so I'm a little confused.

Bunny- But you don't have a Jesus.
Pinky Pie ::higher pitched:: (apparently ponies have higher voices than bunnies) - Yes I do!
Bunny- Oh, you do?
Pinky Pie- Yes!
Bunny- Well is it a pony Jesus?
Pinky Pie- No...
Bunny- Is it a bunny Jesus?
Pinky Pie- No.
Bunny- Well then what kind of Jesus is it?
Pinky Pie- It's just a person Jesus.
Bunny- Oh, that's nice.

Interesting...

Lily and I had a nasty case of the flu a few days before Christmas, and my entire side of the family had it too. A few things went undone this year (Christmas cards, treats) but that's ok! We thankfully felt 90% better in time Christmas. Santa definitely pulled through this year. Our girls were spoiled to death (especially from Grandmas!)Annie loves tiny little animals and carries them around all the time.

I must have been really really good this year too because Santa got me 6 board games. That's right, seis.See the stack of board games in this picture? That ain't all of em.

Some of you may not know "Santa" as well as I do, but he is secretly a board game geek, and seeks out opportunities to buy them and conveniently give them to the "family." :) Really, Santa did so great this year. In fact he got a little carried away. I got a new camera, and many other very, very thoughtful gifts. And Santa brought Eric a ticket to the Fiesta Bowl!

As usual we were family hopping all over the place- the joys of living of Boise! Of course we wouldn't have it any other way. It is such a blessing to be able to see all our loved ones for Christmas!Hope you all had a great Christmas!!

Cheese

This post is about cheese (truly one of the best things in life) and the grating thereof. I have to do a throwback to these old photos from about a year ago, cause they are making me laugh so hard right now.
Something about people grating cheese directly onto their food makes me laugh super duper hard. See? It even made me laugh a year ago, so much that I took a photo of Eric's grating.

One time, we were making homemade pizzas with Adam and Whit, and Adam grated cheese directly onto his pizza....while it was still in the oven. This caused serious havoc and burnage. One of my top 3 favorite memories of them.

My sister just called to tell me she just talked to my brother on the phone and he was in the process of making nachos by grating cheese directly over chips. HEE. LARE. EE. US! See? She gets it. There's something hysterical about it--I can't quite put my finger on it.

Is it that they're trying to skip the difficult step of first grating it onto a plate and then sprinkling it over the food? Or it could be that you lose a large amount of control when you use the grating- directly-over technique...there's no real predictability in the evenness of the layer of cheese, and no way of knowing if all the little strands will even land on your plate or not. It's just an awkward situation in general. Holding the grater in one hand with the big block of cheese in the other hand. I mean, look at Eric...he's straining.

It's late. I should go.

A controlling playdate

We invited Jace over to play this morning. Long before he even arrived, Lily had his whole life planned out for him. She had written their names on their cup, plate and napkin.Written out what they were going to have for snack. (cheese, crackers, teddy grahams)
Now that he's here, she's saying things like: "Jace, are you listening to me? It doesn't seem like you're listening, you're not looking at me."

Yikes! Have fun Jace, with your little control-freak of a friend. Looks like he's happy enough anyway.

What have we gotten ourselves into?

Our Thanksgiving was full of joy and gratefulness. That morning we went to breakfast at my dad's house, where all the kid's participated in a homemade 'Turkey Trot Fun Run' down the road and back. My little perfectionist child just couldn't accept that it was just for fun and was intended to be lighthearted. She was super nervous and intense about it. Here they are at the starting line.
And they're off--Lils is running as fast as her little legs can go,But despite her best efforts, she still can't keep up with the big kids. This picture actually does make me kind of sad.AND, she's in tears.

At the awards ceremony afterwards, she's still not quite over it.
Later that day we enjoyed a dinner with Eric's extended family, but forgot our camera.

4 other little Lily stories that illustrate the sassiness and cuteness of Lils that we love:

1. Yesterday at church we talked about how we should show more love to our family as well as vocalize our love to them. So when we got in the car after church Eric and I both said, "Do you know we love you Lils?"
Then Lils said, all in a huff, "I KNOW! You tell me all the TIME!"
Well, I guess we've got that principle down. :)

2. This napkin, with a rectangle drawn on it, has been pinned on Lily's wall in her room for a few days. Curious indeed, but I can appreciate the modern style. (Let's not focus on the dirt smudge and possible booger on the light switch.)
3. My mom and I went Christmas shopping on Friday and Lily came along. Grammy bought her a dollar store makeup phone, which has been all the rage around here lately. Lily is obsessed with it, carrying it everywhere, pretending to talk on it, and showing it to everyone. She brought it to church yesterday, and Eric leaned over to me and said, "Did you see Lily bedazzled her phone?"
Sure enough! Completely bedazzled!
4. This last one happened just today when I picked Lily up from preschool. All the kids were crowded around our car window saying bye to Lily, and as we were pulling away Lily kinda giggles and says- I like Reece.
Me- Oh, is he pretty nice?
Lily- No, I like how he loo-ooks.::said all sing-songy::

Me (Trying not to laugh and/or sound shocked)- So you think Reece is cute?
Lily- No!
Me- You think he's handsome?
Lily- (smiling) No!
Me- But you said you like how he looks!
Lily- I know just stop talking about it and don't tell daddy!

Oh my dearest Lily.

Beautiful.

The adorableness is a little too much to handle.
Amy (Eric's sister) & Donald are adopting this precious little girl from Ghana, which means we have a new beautiful niece, and Lily and Annie have a new cousin to play with and love. Lucky us!! We are SO excited to meet her this summer!

Awwwwkward

It's Friday! In honor of this day, let's all share our most awkward sacrament meeting stories. (For my dear not of the Mormon faith friends... sacrament meeting=church meeting=people speaking from the pulpit=sometimes funny/awkward occurences.)

Here goes mine: BYU student ward. You know how it is. Some strange ducks.

One particular fellow stands up to give a talk and says, into the microphone, "Excuse me just a minute I have to call my girlfriend, she really wants to hear this :::dialing on his cell phone::: awkward pause:::whispering into the phone::: "oh, hey babe....yeah....I'm starting now."

Then he proceeds to lay his cell phone down on the pulpit so she can hear his every inspired word. So the worst part--after he closes his talk--he lifts his cell phone to his ear and whispers, "Ok, babe. Love you. Bye."

I might add, in this case, girlfriend is most likely "girlfriend" in quotations. Let's just say I had my suspicions. Like I said, odd duck.

Project city

Lily came home from preschool with this beautiful drawing. Guess who? It's kinda obvious. It's me, of course! I've never looked so bald, blonde, and beautiful!!
It made me laugh. Lily said, "Why are you laughing?"

Lily is in a serious crafting phase right now. All she ever wants to do is paint, color, cut, staple and glue. Our house is overtaken by paper. Every little place you could stuff a piece of paper, there is one. It's a good life when you get a homemade card (or 2 or 3 or 4) every single day.

Yesterday Lily asked me "Mom, what do you do with all the projects I make you?" The real answer is: The really precious ones go in a book, and the remaining 98% are placed strategically at the bottom of the trash can so you don't see them and say "Heyyy, what is this doing in the trash?" And then I have to fake like, "What is that doing in there?? Get it out! I don't know who would have put it in there!!"(I've learned from experience.)

I would love to keep every single one, but I don't want to end up like the hoarders on Oprah. Living in a pile of papers up to the ceiling.

Cute things...

Maddi ::looking at the bottom of her shoes:: That says made in China!
Lily: No, it's made by Jesus. Everything is made by Jesus.

Lils: Me, you, and daddy ate all the cheese.
Me: Yeah, I guess we were hungry hippos!
(Later that day) Lils: I need a drink. I'm a thirsty hippo!

Shameless plug

Good morning...today's my lucky day! I just made eggs and one of them was a twin. Sick. Actually I think that's a bad omen.

I promise my blog isn't going to turn into a "Vote For ME I'm awesome" kinda blog, but I went there on Facebook so I figured might as well go here.

I entered my second recipe contest. Trying to see if my success in the Burger contest was all luck or if I got skillz. In this contest they they pick 20 finalists- 10 by popular vote, and 10 by a panel of judges. At first I wasn't gonna bug anybody for votes cause I figure you probably have to get a bajillion votes to even get close to getting through the popular way. I mean, I'm popular, but not a bajillion strong popular. But then I was thinking the judges probably aren't even going to look at the recipes with like 5 votes (mine). So getting some votes is probably essential.

So, here I am asking you to vote for my little Ham and Swiss Sushi Rolls. (They are good, you guys! And fun for kids.)

Click here

You can vote once a day. And thank you so much! You know I'd do the same for you :)

Open to Suggestions

Any suggestions on keeping a sick little 4 year old entertained?

Keep in mind her mother thinks Chutes & Ladders is the most annoying game ever made and must be kept to a once a day maximum. The more bearable games such as Hi-Ho Cherrio, Go Fish and Candy Land have all been played out. Arts & crafts have been done but have been somewhat disappointing without glue stick (what kind of mom doesn't have glue stick anyway?) The 1 to 2 (maybe 3) hour TV limit has been reached. Also, bear in mind this mother has major trouble keeping her eyes open whenever she reads children's books for more than a 10 minute period of time.

Thanks, my friend will greatly appreciate the suggestions.

Stalkers, sickies, and our little monkey

Enjoying the fall weather by our sad little scarecrow girl.
I had my first fan run-in last weekend. I went out to eat with the fam and our cute little waitress said "You're going to think I'm such a dork, but are you Jana? I love your blog! Your link is on my friend's website." I'm so big time, you guys! I have a stalker! It was totally funny...in a creepy sort of way. :)

So I told Erica I'd give her a shout out. HOLLA!!!!! I don't really think you're a stalker. Erica is super duper cute, by the way. I felt a bond with my first and only fan.

Lily has that sickness that everyone has right now....ya know fever, cough, body aches. Poor little thing. She is so cute when she's sick though. I think she secretly likes it in a way, cause she gets her own little water bottle, gets to watch endless "shows," and can request cinnamon toast and bananas with cinnamon and sugar to her little heart's content, and mom will come running.

It's also really funny when she wakes up at night cause she's super "with it." (one of those funny now, but not so funny last night things.) It's the middle of the night and I'm shuffling around in the dark struggling to find light switches and understand the meaning of life, and this is Lily:

Is that the orange medicine? I like the orange better than the red.

I'm so hot. I'm gonna take off these jammies with the feet and change into my princess jammies with the long sleeves and pants.

Our little sicky in her jammies appropriate for sickness.
Annie is at that stage where she is picking up all these cute little tricks. It's like she's our little monkey and we train her do tricks on command for our friends so they will like us.
She does assisted somersaults, animal noises, and the funniest was a few nights ago before dinner Eric said, "we're gonna have prayer." Annie furrowed her brow and started muttering really quietly. We all busted up laughing! Hopefully we aren't taking away from prayer, cause now every time we pray we have a little performer on our hands.

This picture is as close as I can find to the face Annie makes. (Lils says "I was blinking.")

Check it out

On my way into the gym this morning, I saw this little face peering back at me from the front page of the newspaper. So strange- I totally know how Britney Spears feels now. Why can't the tabloids just leave me alone?
I knew they were going to do a little story, but I had no idea that I would be so ginormous and that there would be a crease running directly through my nose making it appear rather large. If you don't want to spend the 75 cents, here is the story for your enjoyment: http://www.idahostatesman.com/life/story/927607.html

In other cute news: received this in Lily's backpack. Totally made my day. Lils doesn't like apples (or any healthy food pretty much).

Back from the Burger Adventure, none the richer...

Except in friendship, experience, and memories! Awwwwww.

Here is our plentiful collection of pictures from our trip.

We started our trip out eager, excited, and pumped about our sweet ride - a red Kia. Any rental car is super sweet when you get it for free.
A skyline of San Francisco. We're not in Mormon town anymore...
or or we??? (this is when I was really picture-happy, and I was like- OH! Utah! Take a picture!)
This is what Napa Valley looked like, row after row of grapes. It was beautiful.
I still get butterflies when I look at this picture. We pulled up to the Inn and all the tents were set up and I was freaking out.
Obligatory pose by Sutter Home sign.
When we got to our room there were grapes, cheese, nuts and crackers. This cheese was the best cheese I've ever had. In fact I want some right now- oh it was so good! I need to find out what kind it was.
Eric pouring our non-alcoholic wine.
Me drinking the non-alcoholic wine.
This was our room...very quaint, very Victorian.

Next we ventured off to lunch at a place called Market. This was our crab cake- DIVINE!
And our mac n' cheese--they're famous for it there so we had to get it. This is making me so hungry! As you can see our vacation centered around food :) Then after a nap, we went off to a nice dinner at Press(life is hard). We had the best steaks we've ever had in our lives there! Serious, like melt in your mouth. YUM.
And we must feature the chocolate souffle...mmmmm
One of the coolest things about the trip was we were planning on going down to that exact area anyway because one of Eric's best friends, Rob was getting married that weekend. Sweet that we won the trip, and were able to see them get married in the Oakland temple.All the Boise boys...tender.
Oakland temple. So gorgeous. The temple, not us. Actually us too.
That evening we had a beautiful dinner on the winery's back patio. This was the view we saw as we ate.
Ok, down to business. This is the morning of the cook-off. All the contestants were extremely nice. I wish I had cooler stories- like they totally talked trash or something. I really liked all of them, not to mention all of them had all these credentials...kinda outta my league, but at this point I still had hope :)Here I am being hopeful.Eric took some very artistic shots for your enjoyment. This banner was so cool, but it scared me. So official and intimidating.
That's my cooking station, with the gigantic clock in front of it.

Our grills
Waiting my turn to start cooking...
And there I go
My finished product.I'm smiling cause I finished! And my burger and I are still in one piece! Yay for that.
The awards where I got a big fat NOTHING. :) Actually, in all seriousness, I was bummed for about an hour afterwards just because of all the emotional buildup and work that you put into it, and then your emotions take a big plummet. You think you have a sliver of a chance, and then.…. your name is not called. Boo. But then I just realized what a great learning experience!!! Free trip, free food, relaxing time with hubby, win-win! Plus, I am already planning on entering next year and as luck would have it, the prize money DOUBLES next year, $100,000 baby! (If any of you want to enter, I can help you with the format of the recipe. It's an important part.)I got one of these little guys to take home. Isn't it cute? Proudly displayed upon my kitchen counter.This is me with the celebrity of the weekend- James McNair. Eric and I were freaking out cause we've seen him on Food Network.

On our way home we saw a beautiful sight- hot air balloons against the sunrise. The balloons seemed to say- Good job, Jana. Even though you overcooked your burgers and your potato pancakes were soggy, you are still a good person and have beautiful children! Eric had a good point-- he said even if I knew in advance I was going to lose, I would still want to go. It was such a fun, crazy weekend full of great memories!

Winning Burger Clip on Today Show

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