I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT!

So my friend Leslie told me to let her know when I'd finished Breaking Dawn. Ok I'm fihally done. It took me much long to finish the final book because 1. I wasn't pushing myself to read, read, read and ignore my family. 2. I wanted to savor the final moments of Edward, Bella & Jacob. 3. Christmas is upon us and there are so many other things going on around here that I just couldn't sit and veg with my book. But now I'm done and I'm craving something else to read. SO what do I pick up. The Host you say. No kinda hoping to get that for Christmas. No, I pick up the 5 book of Harry Potter. I wanted to reread that one and then 6 before that movies comes out. I degress, Breaking Dawn was good. I won't burn it, or take it back. I still love Jacob and I love how she wrote this one. I don't want to say too much because my mom still has to read this and I dont want to give her any clues. I'm just proud of myself for reading 4 books in such a short amount of time. To conclude, I enjoyed the book, it was a fun read. I'll call you Leslie and we'll chat.

Trim the tree

Since we've wanted to get a new shed out back, over the summer we took ALL of our totes filled with holiday stuff down to Mesa to put in our shed at my parents. So, we had to bring home the tree and decorations. After Thanksgiving with everyone feeling yucky, we put off putting up the tree until Friday. They were very excited to put it up and Garrett had asked me everyday that week if we were going to putup the tree. I kept putting him off until Friday. Then he wanted to play on the computer more than hang his ornaments. He finally joined in though.
The cool thing that I did for the boys was had them pick out popcorn tins that they could keep just their ornaments in. It works out very well and they get excited to find their tin each year.
I am usually the one that puts the tree up with the boys
but this year we made sure that Daddy was around to help.
I love all of our different ornaments that we've collected in our 15 years together. (yes, we've been married for 13, but have celebrated 15 Christmases.) There are special places that I put certain ornaments. Like 'Our First Christmas' Cherrished Teddie on goes right at the top in the front. Our It's a Wonderful Life one is just below our lighted snowflake topper. I was telling Michael about my favorite ornaments so that he will know to tell the boys incase I'm not around to tell them. One of my favorite ornaments that was hand made by a friend is from April Nelson. When I found out that I was pregnant with Ammon it was just before Christmas. I had told her because she was my Visiting Teacher. She made me this beautiful ornament and when he youngest son saw it, he asked, Are you sure you should give that to Amy. He didn't know I was pregnant, and knew that we'd been having trouble. She assured him that it was alright this year. It says "a child is a gift of Love...from our Father above." with Mary holding a baby outline. It's a shrinky dink and just beautiful. But now we've put up two trees one here and one at my parents. I think we're ready to get some gifts underneath them!!

Thanksgiving

For the first time I did Thanksgiving dinner, which is kinda a bummer because I was just supposed to bring ice cream to my in-laws and veg. But, with my mom's back hurting from the accident, and Talmage got pink eye, and Michael decided it would be better if we all stayed home from his parents and family. Don't want to infect everyone. So, luckily mom had a turkey breast, not so hard to cook. But I did the yams, stuffing, we already had rolls and Norma, my mother-in-law had gone mashed potato crazy and sent some over with Michael. He was nice enough to go help set up tables and chairs for the dinner over there. Everything turned out great. The yams could have been sweeter, but I guess I have to actually use a pound of butter and a package of brown sugar to do it like Grandma Stiles.

So, needless to say, we had a nice lunch. Spencer and Garrett were both sleeping during our lunch so they ate afterwards. I still got to go over the the Kings and do my family project. I know everyone is wondering what it will be but you'll just have to wait and see. I made everyone fill out family quizes and I took pictures of everyone. It's gonna be cool, just wait and see.

BUILD A BEAR WORKSHOP!!!

So the boys love to go to Chuck E. Cheese when we go on "vacation" to Mesa. This time I thought, what does Chuck E. Cheese really have? Games. Spend money on ok pizza. Walk away with some cheap prize that is going to get broken within hours of getting home. My mom had mentioned a few times that it would be fun to take the boys there. Well we've seen the commericals a bunch and I got to thinking...how much fun would they have if we went to Build A Bear Workshop. I looked it up on the internet to see where the closest one was to my parents house. My friend Kristine had said she'd taken her daughter to one in Chandler. Low a behold there is one right down the street from her house in Gilbert. The San Tan Village. It is a really cool area with all kinds of shops.
Do you know how stressful it can be to take 4 boys ages 7 to 18 months to BABW on your own???? Ok Yes I did it to myself and Actually, it was mostly Spencer that was the handful. He was fine until his diaper started to leak and we all had to go into the good sized restroom to fix that.
The boys really were patient as they waited to get their animals stuffed. The ONE lady that was working was very sweet and told them that since they had waited so patiently so they would get a special prize at the end. And they did. Pin, notebook, coloring book and poster.
It was funny watching them try to convince me to buy the bears all these different accesories. I told them that this trip all they could get was a T-shirt and next time they could get other things. It all worked out well.
And they were very pleased. I was very impressed with the whole BABW attitude and ceramony that they do when they put the hearts in the animals. SOO Cute! We called my Aunt Carol when we were driving home and told her we found a new fun place to go. She was very excited and said they'll have to check it out when they come for Christmas. The boys are really looking forward to that.

Why do they do the thing they do?

Spencer was in a super silly mood one night in Mesa and he kept pulling his shirt over his head. I don't know what was going on with him, but he just wanted his shirt like this. Silly baby boy.

Going to the Movies...

Instead of driving home to Flagstaff on Sunday just to turn around and drive back on Wednesday for Thanksgiving we, the 4 boys and I chose to stay in Mesa and have some fun. We almost headed home because Talmage and Ammon were fighting so much on Monday that I was going crazy. I had a talk with them about behavior and it got a bit better. Tuesday after Spencer fell asleep for a morning nap we hurried and Talmage, Garrett, Ammon & I headed off to Harkins to see "Bolt". It was cute. And the boys liked it.

Twilight ruled my weekend!!!

Now, Michael had been gone for a week to Texas and I had told him in no uncertain terms that on Saturday my mom & I would be at the first showing of "Twilight". Therefore he would be the man in charge of the boys. Well my mom fell off my deck at home on Thursday and I really didn't think that she would be able to come along with me. My wonder of a husband told me that he would be happy to come along with me. So we prepared to go to the 9:50am showing of the movie. Low and behold will miracles never cease!!! My mom was up, dressed and ready to head off to the movie by 8AM!! YEA!! I really did want to go with her because she's read the books too and waiting patiently for me to finish the last one. Yes, I'm still working on it. So, off the the Harkins at Tempe Marketplace. I was very excited when I saw that the 9:50 showing was in the super huge theater. The Cine-Capri. It's huge with awesome sound and curtains that they close then reopen right before the movie starts. I had to get a couple of pictures of us outside by the poster, just for posterity. how crazy are we all? I really loved the movie. It was fun to watch the book come to life. I know alot of people complained about Edward but I didn't mind him too much. It's just a movie. It's just a movie. It's just a movie that my husband bought me a shirt for and brought it all the way from Texas for me. I love him so. Yeah, I love him so much that I wanted to share the joy of the movie with him so we went and saw it together too. He thanked me the next day in a text when he said:"it's all your fault. I blame you" I asked him for what. He replied "I cant stop thinking about the movie" I told him he needed to read the books, to join the masses. He told me Back, you vile creature... I've told him about the other books, so we will see if he chooses to read them for himself.