My mom and I went to a wood store yesterday. We found this darling snowman kit and my mom was kind enough to buy it for us. Perfect timing, eh? … it snowed last night.

We love the snow at our house. Em came home from preschool begging to play it. I helped her make the snowman and then, of course, we had to hurry and paint our snowman pieces before the snow melted. Emma was a little frantic but I promised her the snowman would stay around for a while.

Cute, huh!

My little man did this for an hour a couple days ago….

Seriously!! He is OBSESSED with the vacuum. If only he was strong enough to push it all around. He did a pretty decent job though. He is always wanting me to open the closet that stores the vacuum, broom, and mop…

I’m so sick of having all of the above underfoot when I’m trying to cook and clean. Really, it is so funny but come on… moderation in all things.

My mom bought him his own little broom but he totally prefers the real deal.

On Saturday I decided to not go with Jer and the kids to watch the big football game… I thought “Gosh, I’ll just go to the climbing gym. Have some alone time. Relax while working on some bouldering problems and get some exercise as well.”

So we all loaded into our separate cars. Jer pulled out of the garage first. I followed in the other car and as I followed him down our street I realized something was wrong with the car. I drove a few more feet and hopped out to inspect what was making the car go wobble wobble. I had a flat tire. I waved my arms in the air as Jer drove further and further away from me.

I grabbed my cell. Ring ring… no pick up. Ring ring. I called again and again. I could still see him at the stop light. Why wasn’t he answering… finally he turned the corner. I wondered how long it would take him to see the missed call and the desperate phone message. Well, either way, I faced the facts. I had to change this tire or else. I wouldn’t be going anywhere on this fine Saturday.

So here is my bragging moment. I CHANGE A TIRE!! ALL BY MY SELF!!

I’ve had many flats but Jer or someone was always there to help… or well, do it themselves.

Have you ever changed a tire… or do you know how… I learned a few tips.

Tip A: Loosen the lug nuts before you jack up the car.

Tip B: If the lug nuts don’t budge put the wrench thingy parallel so you can bounce on it with your weight to begin unscrewing them.

Tip C: Once the lug nuts are off, the tire can be really hard to get off.  Turn around backwards and kick the tire like a horse. (it helps if you have good shoes on, flip flops will be no good) You might have to kick it a bunch of times.

Tip D: Put the lug nuts back on loosely with your hand. Lower the car jack so there is weight on the spare then tighten the lug nuts with the wrench thingy.

Hurray! Hopefully this will help some of you women out there who may be mechanically challenged.

This is a little hip hip hurray for my hubby. It was his birthday on Saturday. It was a good day but I have to say it was not the best of days. I wanted his birthday to be really special but we spent the morning at my volleyball game (yea, we won the championship!! Go Draper!!) and a good 4 hours cleaning our carpets.

Luckily my mom offered to watch the kids while we went out. We wanted to do something fun so I told him he could choose. He wanted to go mountain biking. So after we finished our carpet cleaning we rushed out the door to the get the canyon. I knew we’d be finishing the last half mile or so in the dark so I was a little nervous.

Unfortunately, Jer took a spill early on in the ride. It made him light headed and jacked up his shoulder pretty good. He finished the ride but I was worried about him and we did have to finish the ride in the dark.

Jer means so much to me. When he fell I was ahead of him quite a bit so I stop to wait for him to catch up… I didn’t know he’d fallen so when he didn’t catch up I was worried. A hiker passed by and told me he’d fallen. She looked pretty worried. In fact, she looked freaked out and waited around to make sure he was okay. I turned around to go find him and had all those awful thoughts you never want to think about. I was so happy to see his was okay.

Gosh, I’ll spare you all of the mooshy gooshy sentiments but I have them… even if I don’t express them very often.

Happy Birthday Jer!

I had fun making these layouts. I thought I’d share…

Hello internet… not much going on around here.

When we moved to UT we thought that Chopper, our dog, would love it here. So many great mountain trails to sniff, plenty of space to run, and sweet mountain water to lap up. Well, we didn’t do our research… The Wasatch Mountain Range is pretty strict- when it comes to pooches- because of the water shed. We drink the water that comes down from those mountains, you see…

Thus, no dogs allowed in all the major canyons. What?? Bummer, because we LOVE the mountains. (I think I could spend all my time up there… live up there. Climb, hike, board every day of my stink’n life. Oh, wait I think you all know that already.)

Don’t deer poop too? What’s with all the chlorine and hard stuff in my water if it’s fresh mountain stream water? Can’t they clean out doggy doo too? Okay, okay. Really I’m fine with it. I understand. I like dogs but I’m not a dog lover so I can see why they might not want to deal with all that. Preserve nature and stuff…. ya dee yaa de…

My point was…. we went on a lovely hike over the weekend. There is one canyon (Millcreek) that allows doggies and it turns out to be pretty fun because others are there with their four legged hounds as well. They run up to each other, sniff and move on. Luckily we rarely run into an aggressive poochie.

The hike was absolutely beautiful. We had a lovely treat to run in to two moose right off the trail. They weren’t even afraid of us or Chopps. They just kept munching on the bushes. It was a bull and his cow… isn’t it mating season? We watched them for a while. Super cool!

Well, I rarely blog at night and now I know why… Jer wants a turn at the computer so I’m getting booted. I think it’s my bed time, nighty night.

Here’s todays hair doo. A little anti frizz cream, a little diffuser and waaa laaa. I really like it and it was so easy!! Woo hoo! This is what I wanted. She took so much bulk out of my hair so I don’t feel too afro-ie. I feel like it is more me than the straight doo. A lot less effort. I’ll still go straight every now and then but this is lovely and easy.

Thank you so much for the nice comments. It made me feel so pretty and grown up… aaa shucks!!

When I was still a wee thing… maybe 8 or so… my brother and sisters would play this game called Chop, chop, timber. We’d stand on the arm and to sofa and chop at eat others legs until we “fell the tree.” It was great fun and I think we’d get a little rush when we’d fall backwards onto the cushions. Aw, the simple pleasures of youth… well, that is all I could think about when preparing for this post.

For quite awhile I’ve been wanting a shorter doo. Everyone said no… I should leave the odd bob on top of my head but, alas, I needed to get it out of my system. I did it yesterday so I’m not sure how I feel about it. I’ll have to do it curly and see what happens. I wanted a cut that would lay nice and straight and also be able to go wildly curly. I was kind of surprised with the cut because it looks nothing like the picture I’d picked out. Hummm, my greatest fear is having a helmet looking hair cut or a frizzy afro (believe me, this happens). I’ll have to take a picture when I try it curly and let you know how I like it. So far I just keep looking in the mirror thinking “is this me?”
Bye, bye, ponytail.

Have you ever seen Shanna’s Show on Disney Play House? Well, Emma has seen it a few times. One day she decided that she would do The Emma Show. Ever since that day, Emma has loved putting on these performances, especially when we have company over.

Her dancing skills and made up songs never cease to make us laugh. Watch out though… you’re never sure what your gonna get. I”ll call this one– The Earthquake.

Emma had a little performance at her preschool. My friend recorded it and put it on her blog. It’s super cute so go check it out at Moons Over Draper.

I’m getting around to posting our Halloween pictures. Halloween turned out to be really fun. We invited some family to come over and we had a killer festive party. The theme turned out to be caramel, caramel and more caramel. We ate until we got sick. I also made some tasty apple cider to wash down all our caramel treats.

Here are some snaps of the kids. Isaac wasn’t too cooperative so this is the best I have.

Emma’s tag says Fi-Fi. I wasn’t sure if she’d love being a pink poodle because she wanted to be a princess but she ended up loving it so much. Of course, It’s PINK!! I love these costume because they are warm and no extra bundling required.

Here is my latest nephew. Gotta love the hot dog.

Anyhoo, I’ve been doing pretty good. We had a fun weekend. Kerflop came down for a day or so. I took her to Cornbelly’s because I thought her boys would love it. Umm, yea, they did.

Another thing I’ve been up to is volleyball. Every Thursday night I get together with some ladies in the stake and play. It’s always so much fun because we usually laugh our heads off. Well, we had a regional tournament this weekend and we rocked. We came in first place for our bracket. We are going to have our championship game in a couple weeks. Ahh, super fun. The competition makes me a little nervous but I’m glad I’m doing it because I think it’s good for me to get out of my comfort zone a little bit.

I think that is all for now. I’m obviously not doing to Nopoohoododooo November blogging thingy.