Motivation?

I have had so very little motivation to do anything lately. It seems like I have no energy and am always tired. I just mopped the kitchen floor for the first time in I have no idea how long. Let's just say the juice and mustard and brownie drips were too numerous to spot clean anymore. It took all my mustering to get the mop out.

I'm not sure what the deal is. I am usually a pretty productive and motivated person, but I just can't seem to handle much these days. I am wondering if I am low on iron. I had severe anemia when I was pregnant with Davin and was on iron supplements. I am going to start taking them again and see if it makes a difference.

Anyway, Davin is not feeling good and is running a fever since last night. I'm not sure what is wrong. Possibly just teething. I'm not going to worry too much about it unless it doesn't get better/he doesn't pop up a tooth in the next couple days. It's sad because he looks so tired and blah. The upside is that I am getting lots of snuggles and loves, he is taking longer naps and he even let me rock him for a few minutes earlier today.

I have my first swim meet this Saturday. I am a little nervous that I possibly registered for too many events. Hopefully I am not toast after my first race. I am going to swim the 100 IM, 50 back, 100 free, and the 100 back. I will also probably do the 200 free relay. Send me good, fast vibes on Saturday.

Lastly, just a quick little Weston story. He is getting very excited about Christmas and likes to read his book about the story of the first Christmas and Christ's birth. So the other afternoon he found this scarf in his toy bin and wrapped it around his head, then got his baby doll and said he was Mary and he was holding baby Jesus. He spent a good hour being Mary and handing baby Jesus to me and then taking his turn cuddling him. It was kind of funny that Ian and I couldn't persuade him to be Joseph instead of Mary. Oh well. I'm glad he knows the reason we celebrate Christmas.

Modeling and a Wedding!

Finally I am getting around to posting the last bit of California pics. I mentioned that my friend, Paige, did a little photo shoot with the boys and I while we were there. The pictures turned out so cute. These are my favorites. If you want to see the rest of the pictures from the shoot go to www.thegreenpaige.squarespace.com and click on Galleries. We are under Bowles Boys. Thanks again Paige!



On a more recent note . . . Davin has a new "spot". His sitting up on his own skills aren't quite as stellar as they could be, but he keeps falling off the couch, so this is the compromise. He seems to enjoy it.
This is what we woke up to yesterday. It continued to snow all morning and into the afternoon. Weston was so excited to get to play in it. He is "shoveling" the snow off the grass and onto the walkway. How helpful. He would have done it all day too, if I had been willing to stay out in the cold with him. I think it is time to break down and buy the kid a snowsuit.
Also yesterday morning I frosted cupcakes for the bridal shower I helped host. Weston was a big fan and didn't make as big of a mess as he did with his last birthday cupcake. The funny thing was that he took real bites and ate the entire frosted top then told me he wanted another one. I told him to finish the one he had. He thought it was cornbread. :)
My friend and old roommate from BYU is getting married in a couple weeks (the day before my anniversary). I helped host her bridal shower. It went really well. We decorated with green apples and accents of black, served soups and yummy breads (which was perfect with the snowy weather), had cupcakes and played Two Truths and Lie with Lisa and Ryan. It went great and was well attended. I had SO much fun staying afterward and talking and laughing with my friends. Here are the 5 of us who have been friends since the dorms at BYU, 7 years ago now! (L-R: Lex, Liz, me, Lisa, Tara)
My Aunt Pam and my cousins watched the boys during the shower. I so appreciated it. Apparently the boys were well-behaved and went to bed without a fuss, so that was good. I am not loving the cold weather. It is so cold that the snow didn't melt today, even though it was sunny. Blah, winter is officially upon us. The only good thing about winter is that Christmas is in the middle of it and I can bake whenever I want. I'm still pulling for one more day in the 70's before the warmth is sucked out of Utah forever (no I don't think that I am being melodramatic).

Costumes and Crazy 8's

Our Halloween night was pretty fun. Our dysfunctional ward doesn't quite get the whole how-to-throw-a-Halloween-party thing, so they had the ward party ON Halloween. We went for the trunk or treat part then just left and finished up trick or treating. Weston was a BIG fan of trick or treating this year. He loved walking around and getting candy. Here he is getting ready for the festivities. Arr Matey!
The fam at the ward party. Unfortunately you can't see Ian's costume. I didn't dress up this year and Davin ended up being sort of a puppy. It's really just a regular outfit, but it had ears on the hood and puppy feet as the footies, so it worked. Perhaps next year I will plan ahead and we will all coordinate and be cute.
The boys in costume. After the trunk or treat I took Davin home and we hung out and gave out candy. Weston trick or treated our neighborhood for another whole HOUR. I was so impressed. He was tired when he got home, but excited to check out his stash and help hand out candy. Overall, definitely a successful and fun Halloween.
Now that Halloween is over I am fully launched into the holidays and Christmas will be here before we know it! Crazy. Speaking of crazy. I got tagged to do this Crazy 8 tag. Here goes . . .

8 TV Shows I Love To Watch...
The Office
Big Bang Theory
How I Met Your Mother
Lost
Scrubs
What Not to Wear
Mythbusters

8 Favorite Restaurants
Cafe Rio
Spaghetti Factory
Claim Jumper
hmmm . . . we don't eat out that much
McDonalds (Weston loves to go there. I am actually really sick of it)
Mimi's
In N Out
Golden Spoon (does that count as a restaurant?)
Red Lobster (lame, I know, but I love fried shrimp and their biscuits)

8 Things That Happened Yesterday
Went to swim practice
Did 5, yes 5, loads of laundry
Fed Davin green beans without getting any food on his bib. Yay!
Shopped at Smiths
Got gas for 2.44/gallon
Washed bottles
Played the piano
Watched "Father of the Bride" and ate pumpkin chocolate chip cookies

8 Things I'm Looking Forward To
Lisa's shower
My swim meet
Baking a pie for Thanksgiving
Christmas shopping for the kids
Davin sleeping through the night
Seeing the midnight showing of Twilight
Going to Disneyland again
Our anniversary

8 Things on My Wish List
More sleep!
To actually lose the last of the baby weight
A new wardrobe (perhaps with guidance/money from What Not to Wear)
A cruise with Ian and a couple of friends
To live closer to all my family
A new D-SLR camera
A bigger car
Someone to clean my house or at least take my kids away while I clean

If you feel like doing the tag I would LOVE to read it from everyone! I am feeling pretty overwhelmed with all the stuff I have going on in the next few weeks/months. I hope I can manage to get everything done and still keep my sanity and actually enjoy all the fun things coming up.

Today I bought the most amazing fuzzy socks at Bath and Body Works. They are making me SO happy! I am even almost content with the gray, rainy weather since I'm wearing such great socks. Also, I took the kids this morning and VOTED. It will be interesting to see what the outcome of this election is and what the future holds.

Weston's Video Blog: Googly-eyes and Arc-Reactors

The Iron Man Pumpkin.

Fall Fun

I have been really enjoying the nice Fall weather here in Utah. There are always a few weeks of Fall when the temperatures are in the 60's and 70's and the leaves are changing, but haven't disappeared yet, where I really LOVE living in a place that has 4 seasons. It's about 4 months into winter that I hate it. Anyway, the other day Weston and I were playing outside while waiting for Ian to get home from work and I took this picture of him. It was so golden and beautiful.
Despite the gorgeous weather I still have to do the laundry. Sometimes Davin keeps me company.
Davin was wearing this really cute vintage designed 101 Dalmatians outfit the other day that my Aunt Nancy sent for him and it was so stinkin adorable I had to get a picture of him in it. Plus he's just so easy to take pictures of . . .
Last night we carved pumpkins and did the donut cat. Not sure what is up with Weston. This is the face we get when he doesn't want to smile for the camera, but we keep telling him to. I say, good enough.
Let the record show that Weston actually put his hand in the pumpkin 3 or 4 times. He pulled out ONE seed. Very helpful.
After enlisting Alann's help with the final scrape out Weston and I carved our basic, but cute pumpkin. We are proud. It is a sideways jack-o-lantern because when I went to carve it I couldn't get it to stand upright. Oh well.
Not even joking . . . Ian really did use this power saw to carve his Ironman pumpkin. He also stayed up way too late and went to 3 different stores last night in order to fashion an arc reactor so he could go to work today as Tony Stark. Boys.
Our finished pumpkins. Success! I like my pumpkin's pointy teeth. Very spooky.
Today I wasn't sure what we were going to do all day since Halloween festivities don't really start until evening time. I remembered that I saw a sign at Walmart that said they were doing trick or treating there in the afternoon, but I couldn't remember what time. So after Davin's nap, around noon, we headed over to Walmart. I had to go there anyway to return one of Ian's failed arc reactor attempts and also to pick up a pair of baby nail clippers (mine disappeared after my trip). So we did those little things and then had lunch at the little McDonalds there. By the time we were done they had started the trick or treating.

I know it sounds incredibly ghetto to trick or treat at Walmart, but it was actually really awesome! The boys each got a balloon (which they LOVED) with a number tied to it. Every 15 minutes they announced a number and that person won the "cake walk" and got to get a cake. Then they gave you a list of the places where there were people handing out candy. We wandered around the store and found the employees giving out candy. They all thought Weston was adorable and he got a lot of candy. Good candy too, not just the stuff they knew they wouldn't be able to sell. He even got a Lindt truffle! (I ate that one)

It ended up being a perfect Halloween day activity and, bonus!, I got my errand done. We still have one more trick or treating event tonight at the ward trunk or treat and then we will go around our block and be done until next year. Weston is a converted Halloween fan and will probably ask about trick or treating several times in the next couple months. What a fun holiday and season!

Weston's Video Blog: Episode 1

Pumpkin Picking

Last night Ian came home a little early from work to begin our fun family outing. We ate our Southwest Corn Chowder then bundled up and headed over to the pumpkin patch. I had never been to a pumpkin patch where you pick your pumpkins from the field. It was so fun. Since it's only a few days until Halloween, the patch was pretty picked over, but we still managed to find 2 decent pumpkins. Weston LOVED riding in the wagon around the field. He was marginally annoyed when the pumpkins left little room for him in the wagon. Davin was our eye candy, as usual. He's such a cutie. I put him in the Frankenstein hat that we got from my friend, Sarah, for Weston's 1st Halloween. When Weston saw him in the hat he said "Is Davin freakin Einstein?" He never did say it right, the whole night.

Here is Weston trying to pull our pumpkins in the wagon. He only tried for a few minutes before he said "Dad, hold the pumpkins so I can ride in there."
He got what he wanted, but we didn't hold the heavy pumpkins. He had to squish in there with them.
Here's our little "freakin Einstein" with one ear poking out. Hee hee. He's so cute.
Family fun at the pumpkin patch.
Weston also picked out this mini pumpkin. The guy who owned it was really nice and let Weston pick out another little tiny mini pumpkin since this one was only going to last a few days. We will definitely have to go back next year. It was such a fun experience, much better than picking a pumpkin at Walmart, and cheaper too! We got 2 big pumpkins and Weston's 2 minis for $6!
When we got home we had a little Halloween treat out neighbors had brought over earlier that day. Weston thought the chocolate dipped pretzel spiders were awesome and he had some milk with his skull straw. We love Halloween!
We are planning on carving our pumpkins tomorrow night with some friends, so we shall see if Weston is interested in the carving this year.