"toast is done!"

I thought this was funny and had to share it. yesterday I was trying to do everything at once- as usual- and was juggling laundry, breakfast, and working. I put in some toast for Linc and got out the cinnamon sugar to put on it when it was done. As it was cooking, i went into the laundry room to fold some towels. When I came out, Linc looks at me and says "toast is done!". He had climbed up on the counter, got the toast out of the toaster, poured about half of the cinnamon sugar on it and was basically just licking the sugar off. I am so thankful for Lincoln being so independent and being able to feed and take care of himself when his mom is busy! :)

Hawaii Highlights

I have been so busy since we got home that I haven't even had time to post pics on here of our amazing trip! This top one is probably not one of the "highlights" but funny anyways.

This was at the Black Sand beach on the road to Hana. This was one of my favorite parts of the drive.

The drive was pretty long and windy, but some of the most beautiful scenery I have ever seen. they say that it is "the most beautiful drive" or something like that.

Awwww. So sweet!

This was at dinner on our actual anniversary. Part of our package deal was a free dinner at this restaurant at the resort we were staying at. Well, up to $80 anyways. Everything there is SO expensive!

This was after Jeff got knocked down by a wave. We spent most of our time either SCUBA diving or snorkeling. We were underwater more than we were above. Just how we wanted it! We saw a sea turtle 2 different times. One was when we were snorkeling up the beach from our hotel at a place called Black rock. It is perfect for snorkeling and SCUBA there because the visibility is so good. Anyways, I looked to one side of me and saw this HUGE turtle swimming right for me! I moved out of it's way and was in awe as it swam by me like it didn't even know I existed! it was probably one of my top 3 things from our trip.

This was our view every night from our deck. jeff had a hard time getting me to leave that chair. I could have sat there all day long, every day and just enjoy the view. I could see turtles in the water every morning, right out from our beach. I also saw some whales out a little further one day.

This was at the Luau at our hotel. We had a great time. The food was amazing! They bbq'ed some beef that Jeff LOVED! Every night after that, he could smell them cooking it and he wanted to go steal some. All in all, the trip was fabulous! A week is plenty long to be gone. We were missing the boys a few days before we came home. They were happy to see us, but had a great "vacation" of their own at grandma Nancy's, grandma Debbies, Nate & Leslie's, and Randy & Ash's. I am so lucky to have such great family members that are willing to watch the boys so we could go spend some time together for our anniversary. :)

Downside to a week in paradise

As I am sitting here in the Honolulu airport at 12:45 am (Utah time), waiting for our 6 hour flight that will arrive in SLC at approximately 7:45 am TOMORROW, it occurs to me that this may be the first of several down sides to escaping to paradise for a week. I have a hard time sleeping on a plane, but that is just what I must do or else be a total wreck for the next week, while my 32 (yes that's right...32) year old body recovers! Not to mention the 10 loads of laundry that will awwait me once the bags get all unpacked. So for all of you that may have felt a little jealousy that you weren't coming with us, go ahead and be glad tomorrow morning when you wake up and have had a good night's sleep and aren't picking up the pieces of being gone for a week. :) I will be sure to post pictures tomorrow when I am putting off doing the laundry and reading blogs instead.

11 reasons

A week from today is mine and Jeff's 11th wedding anniversary. I can't believe I am old enough to have been married for that long, but it's true. Last year was kind of a big one for us and so we took off to Hawaii for a romantic getaway. We stayed at the Grand Hyatt in Kauai and it was AMAZING! I absolutely loved that place! Besides the beautiful scenery, ocean all around you, green everywhere, it had a small town feel to it. There was not one highway or freeway on the whole island- just 2 lane roads everywhere. The morning we were supposed to leave, I was sitting on our deck/patio which had an amazing view of the ocean and I could see the whales swimming by as I was sitting there, I told Jeff he was going to have to go get the boys and bring them back because I wasn't leaving. He dragged me out, kicking and screaming, and then on the way to the airport, when we passed the COSTCO, that sealed the deal. I was moving there permanently! I can live anyplace as long as they have a COSTCO! He said that we had to go back to reality but he would bring me back to my new favorite place next year. Well, what do you know.... it's next year already!!! We are leaving on Tuesday and are going to Maui this time. I hope they don't have a COSTCO or you guys might have to come visit me there if you want to ever see me again! Anyways, I just wanted to write down some reasons (1 for every year of marriage) that I love Jeff. If it gets too sappy, just stop reading...

1. He always gives me the last bite of something we are sharing

2. He turns on my seat warmers before I get in the car

3. He lets me put my cold feet on him in bed to warm them up

4. He does the dishes!!!

5. He is a absolute genius with the BBQ grill

6. He thinks I am beautiful even when I clearly am not

7. He is very hardworking and dedicated to his job

8. He has great lips...ewwwww I know, i know... bear with me here...

9. He can fix anything!!!

10. He loves spending one on one time with the boys so I can have some free time

11. He is the best dad and husband i could ever ask for

I could go on and on but those are just a few of the reasons why I am so grateful that I saw him and his awesome mullet while I was cruising State Street about 13 years ago. I am also glad that he decided to marry me even though he was given a fair warning that it wouldn't be easy. It hasn't been easy all the time, but there's been more good times than bad and we always seem to work it out. I am a very lucky girl to have him!! Love you Jeffrey!!

Batman and R..........BATMAN!

Now before you think to yourself, "Nicole has really gone too far with her obsession of dressing her boys alike every chance she gets", we did not intend on having 2 Batmans for Halloween. However, due to a wardrobe malfunction, we ended up with Dawson being Dark Knight batman and Linc was regular Batman.

We had a party at my mom's house with all the cousins. We had homemade chicken noodle soup, rolls and Mummy Dogs. (hotdogs in a blanket that look like mummies, all wrapped up) We had some bubbling witches brew (homemade root beer) to drink and LOTS of candy!

Grandma Debbie bought them these suckers that have a funny mouth on the other side. They were a big hit!

Earlier in the day, we went to Jeff's parents and his grandparents house to trick-or-treat and so they could see the kids in their costumes. Then we went to Dad's work to the party they have there every year. At night, we went to my grandparents house and then my parents. We made quite the rounds- as usual. Jeff's brother Randy and his wife Ashley came over and went trick or treating with us and brought the boys a huge treat! I wonder how long it's going to take us to eat all of that candy. The only things that we tempting to me at all were the full size bag of swedish fish that Ashley brought each of them and the GIANT Butterfinger that one of our neighbors was giving out. Amazingly, the boys really haven't been asking for candy that much today. Maybe they ate too much yesterday!

Lincoln didn't really know or care what was going on last year so it was all new and fun to him. He loved his costume- which is rare for any of the 2 year olds I have been around. He wanted to leave it on all day. I had to take it off to spot clean it after we left Dad's work and he ate a bunch of M & M's on the way home. He LOVED trick-or-treating and would beat Dawson to each door and yell "Trick or Treat"!! He would run and/or skip from house to house. It was the cutest thing ever! I was so sad that I didn't take the video camera.

Mini-Golf With Grandma and Grandpa

We got a call from Grandma today asking us to go mini-golfing. Every time we drive past Mulligans, Dawson asks me when we are going to go mini-golfing again. The last time we went, I was carrying baby Lincoln in a Baby Bjorn carrier. So it was time. We decided to do the Haunted House course, being 2 days before Halloween and all.

Lincoln was interested in golfing for about 2 holes. They gave him his own little putter and he mostly wanted to hit people and/or things with it. He loved running up and down the hills on the different holes. Luckily, we were pretty much the only ones there, so he could run free and not bug anyone. I am not sure why he was crawling here.

Dawson is a great golfer! He would tell us on each hole if we got a par, birdie, etc. We didn't see many hole in ones!

Grandma and grandpa had to show us all the correct form and golf etiquette. I am pretty sure we failed at the etiquette part. Grandma and Grandpa were thrown off a bit with the little putters. They are both excellent golfers and they are used to the real putters and so me and Dawson had the advantage. We have only practiced with the mini golf ones! :) (well recently anyways) It's a good thing we weren't keeping score or else we might have made them feel bad. That might fall into the "grandparent abuse" category and we all know how serious those consequences are!!!

I was a PERFECT autumn day and great for mini-golf. We all enjoyed being outside in the beautiful weather and spending time doing something fun with grandma and grandpa! It was A LOT better than Stink-e-cheese!!!

Stink-e-cheese

Dawson has been off track now for a few weeks and he is officially BORED! Yesterday he said he wanted to do something fun and could we go to Chuck-e-cheese. I was in a nice-mom mood and told him we could. I made sure we stopped somewhere on the way to get me some lunch so I didn't have to eat their nasty pizza.

Dawson's favorite game is the snowmobile ride/game. He is really good at it too!

Only one was working, but that didn't stop Linc from sitting on the broken one and playing like it was really working.

Linc loved EVERYTHING! He has a hard time moving from one thing to the next- he has a tendency to want to do the same thing over and over and over.

Linc's favorite thing was this Monster Truck ride. He kept coming over to get more tokens and getting in it and starting it over and over. I don't think he remembered ever going there before so everything was new and fun! He liked the big singing characters, but wanted to keep his distance. Heck, I think they are a little freaky and I am 32 years old! All in all, we had a good time with few melt-downs. Check Stink-e-cheese off our list for at least another few months. :)

Family Pictures

These are the outcome of family pictures that I mentioned a few weeks ago. I have a girl named Kami Snarr, who owns Salted Paper Photography who has taken the boys pictures a couple of times. I absolutely LOVE her and her work. She is so talented! The one above just turned out so perfect with the colors from the sunset and everything.

We went out to the Great Salt Lake, of all places, to have these taken. Besides the pungent smell of brine in the air, it was actually a really beautiful, pleasant evening out there. Dawson kept saying how stinky it was out threre, but Lincoln didn't seem to mind.

Linc was in HEAVEN! Anywhere he can get wet, muddy, or both- can't be a bad place at all!

This is one of my favorites! He was actually looking at some birds.

I love this one of Linc and Daddy

We took Sturgis with us so that he could be in some of the pictures. We had to keep him close though because in this place, there was a lot of broken glass that we didn't want him to step on.

Awwwwww! what a handsome boy!

Classic Sturgis and Linc....

She took this one of Dawson and Sturgis' footprints in the sand. Linc was a mile down the beach at this point and was not coming back anytime soon.

So I think they turned out good. I love the fact that they are so natural and how they capture the boys' real actions and personalities instead of a fake, cheesy smile.

Since I don't feel like doing my laundry, I will participate...

8 TV shows that I watch (in no particular order)

1. The Office
2. Grey's Anatomy
3. Gossip Girl
4. NIP/Tuck - hasn't started yet
5. The Hills
6. SpongeBob
7. Survivor
8. Dirt- also hasn't started yet

8 Things I did yesterday (this is a stretch because I had a pretty lazy day)

1. Woke up
2. Read the paper
3. Took a shower
4. Ate YUMMY Chile Verde and Taco Soup
5. Ate a piece of a caramel apple
6. Took some pictures
7. Watch people carve pumpkins
8. Went to my mom and dads for dinner

8 Places that I love to eat

1. Tepanyaki
2. Cafe Rio
3. Texas Road House
4. Ruth's Chris
5. Steak Pit
6. Porcupine
7. Rafaels
8. Melting Pot

8 Things I am looking forward to

1. November 5th - will it ever end?
2. Thanksgiving- grammy's rolls!! YUM!
3. Week in Hawaii with Jeff :)
4. Replacing my nasty carpet
5. Christmas Parties
6. California Trip - if i can talk Jeff into it :) He thinks once a year is enough- HELLO?
7. Spring
8. 4th of july 2009

8 Things on my wish list

1. My friends and family to be happy and healthy
2. Lincoln to be potty trained
3. more patience
4. 1/2 of Lincoln's energy
5. A Live in Maid
6. The back seat of my car to not be dirty all of the time
7. New carpet
8. Lincoln to keep his pants and/or diaper on for more than 2 minutes

Tag 8

1. BreeAnn
2. Moo
3. Jen Y
4. Holly
5. mom
6. dad
7. Leslie
8. Tam

Fun Weekend

This past weekend Jeff was out of town and we needed someone to entertain us, so we invited my best friend Jaime to come hang out with us. Her little girl Rylee and Linc are just a couple months apart and they LOVE to play together. We have already told them that they are getting married and so far, they are all for it! Jaime also brought her niece, Shelby, with her to sleep over on Friday so we had a HUGE, messy party with the kids. Really we just ordered dinner from Chili's, the kids had a bath, and watched a movie, then went to bed. But the messy part was true!

These pictures are from yesterday when we went over to Jaime's dad's (papa Deano) house to have our annual Pumpkin Carving Extravaganza. Papa Deano is one of the best grandpa's that I know. (There is some very strict competition in this group, so that is saying a lot) He always puts on a full spread of food- this year was homemade taco soup and chile verde burritos. YUM! He also had stuff for the kids to make caramel apples- with all the toppings you could imagine! The kids loved it! Then we carved our pumpkins. Ours didn't get finished, so I will post some pics when they are all done!

All the kids playing in papa Dean's back yard.

Dawson and Shelby with their m & M covered caramel apples.

This was the highlight of evening on Friday. I made sure there were no "parts" showing. Look for this picture in Dawson and Shelby's and Lincoln and Rylee's wedding videos!

Election

Nationalized Health Care: Truth or Consequences

Even though I donate a good portion of my time and money towards an organization that is political in nature, I have hesitated to blog about it. However, I wanted to share this video with everyone in case any of you thought that Universal healthcare sounds like a good option for our country. If you have followed the election at all, you know that Barack Obama has a plan that he wants to introduce, should he win the election, that would basically be a single payer healthcare system, with the government being that single payer. The association that I belong to is called NAHU, National Assoc. of Health Underwriters. It is basically an organization of health insurance agents and insurance carriers. It's probably pretty boring stuff to the average person, but they put together the video above that is a true story of one of our members, and contradicts the documentary SICKO (by Michael Moore) by providing the actual facts and figures and not just a bunch of political rhetoric. I first saw it when I went to the annual convention in San Diego this past June. I thought it was very interesting and confirmed what I had believed all along about Single Payer systems. Anyways, your vote for president may or may not matter, living in Utah, but who we send to Washington as our Congressmen and Senators DOES MATTER!!!! They are the actual law makers and they need to represent OUR views and positions to the rest of Washington. If the link above doesn't work, go on youtube and type in Truth or Consequences. It is worth your time!

Happy Birthday Evan & Jones

Happy Birthday to 2 of my favorite people!!!! My cousin Jones' birthday is today!! He was just like our other brother growing up. He was always around and got the brunt of my frustrations of being the middle child most of the time. He claims that I beat him up relentlessly. Unfortunately for me, we actually have video of this, so I can't deny it. :) There was the time that he bit himself hard and said I did it. My saving grace was that the bite marks were obviously HIS! I do have to give him credit for letting me dress him up like a girl and put make up on him and curl his hair. He was a good sport. That was just last week. ha ha ha! Not really. Now we are great friends and there is very little biting or tripping between us. He is truly ONE OF A KIND and I love him dearly!
Little E, Eman, or Evan James Crane as some people refer to him turned the big ONE yesterday. I can't believe he is already a year old!! He has always been such a handsome boy and is such a little character!! He has started to walk and thinks he is so cool! He is quite the novelty in our family and puts up with a lot of mauling from the other cousins. :) Linc tried to push him out of the way the other day at grandma's and Evan pushed him right back!! Go EVAN. Linc needs someone to push him back every now and then! :) I have a feeling they will be great friends as Evan gets older and can play with the big kids more. We love Evan and can't imagine our family without him!!! Happy Birthday buddy!

Sleeping In

I just wanted to report that we did not make any progress with Linc sleeping in, but my 6 year old took it apon himself to take care of Linc so I could sleep in. They were just watching TV in my room, so I was snoozing a bit. I woke up and realized they were now watching TV in the family room so I went to check it out. Dawson had turned on a show for Linc, poured them both a bowl of cereal and they were just chillin. Now THAT'S what I'm talking about. I don't think I am going to let Dawson go back to school ever. :) hahaha! He is my little helper and LOVES to do anything I ask. Anytime I ask him to help me with something, he almost gets excited to help. He hardly ever complains. He is my angel and i don't know what I would do without him!

Halloween Party

I am happy to report that Dawson's class party was a success. The bad news is that I was so busy with everything that I didn't get any pictures to put on here. :( We ended up doing 2 games- halloween pictionary (one of the mom's had a really cute game already made up where you pull a bubble out of a witches pot and then you draw whatever object is written on the bubble. We also did the mummy wrap game- after a technical malfunction with ghost bowling that I was trying to put together. The kids LOVED it! Dawson was the one in his group who got to be the mummy and I wish i would have gotten a picture. Oh well! We also did a craft where they glued different shaped noodles onto a black paper to make a skeleton. They turned out super cute and the kids thought they were cool. Then we had cupcakes and witches brew. We put apple cider in a pot with dry ice and they thought that was awesome!! No one wanted to actually drink the apple cider though- they all poured it out. Ha, ha! :) Then, I read a story called Halloween Night that I had bought at Barnes and Noble. It is a really cute story- it reads like Twas the Night before Xmas, but obviously with Halloween things instead. Anyways, I am relieved to have that checked off my list. Today is Dawson's last day before he is off track. We are all excited to sleep in for a few weeks! He has been having a hard time getting up lately. He needs his sleep like his mama. Lincoln gets up at 7 at the latest even if he goes to bed before 8. We are going to try to change this in the next few weeks! :)

Toddler Bed and Potty Training time?

Oh how boring would my life be without my sweet little Lincoln? The other night when i went to check on him before i went to bed, this is the scene that I found.... Light on, room totally trashed, and Lincoln crashed out on the floor! Well, Jeff and I thought it was so ADORABLE! Then, last night, this is what Jeff found....

Light off this time, room not as trashed, PANTS and DIAPER OFF, crashed in the rocking chair! This was equally as adorable. However, this morning when Jeff went in to get Lincoln, he was standing at the door, with no pants, no diaper and he had POOPED! Not so adorable! Especially since Jeff did not realize he had pooped until after he picked him up. So, my question is this.....do I really have to switch him to the toddler bed like his pediatrician has been telling me to do for over a year since he started to climb out? And.... does the diaper situation mean he is ready for potty training? We got the little potty out a while ago and just put it in the bathroom, but he doesn't really seem that interested in it or going on the big potty either. As far as the bed is concerned, I have been trying to let him stay in his crib as long as humanly possible for 2 main reasons. Number 1- so that he would have a place where he would be confined so that he would keep taking naps and go to sleep good at night, Number 2- because he is my last kid and I want him to be a baby forever. But it is pretty clear that it's time to get the old toddler bed out. I am hoping he will think it is cool and want to sleep in a big boy bed. We'll see how it goes. As far as the potty training is concerned, considering the indendependent little soul that Linc is, I think I am in for a battle. Any tips or suggestions?