Trevor's Birthday

(yes that is Trevor giving bunny ears to his cake...must be an 8 year old boy thing)

We left to go to Utah on Trevor's birthday. It was only a half day at school because of Thanksgiving break and I knew that Bryan would be working until around six so I decided that Trevor could have a birthday party right after school.

After much deliberation he decided to have a Mario Party Party. Which meant that he wanted to play Mario Party on the Wii with his friends, which meant that he could only invite 3 friends. It was a hard choice to make because he knew his other option was to invite his entire school class plus friends from church and get MEGA amounts of presents, but I was SO relieved that it would just be a few boys coming over to pay Nintendo.

As the boys played upstairs I decided to come down and frost the cake. For those that have never seen the way I make the cake toppers for my kids cakes here is how I do it. The day before the birthday I print off a picture, put wax paper over it, and trace/color the picture with frosting. Then I put that in the freezer over night so that it will peel off the wax paper and go onto the cake. Some years it works great, others, not so great. I pretty much have the process down and can make it work. This year I had done all the steps and the topper was frozen and ready to apply on the cake, but low and behold....when I came down to frost the cake, I see that one of the kids (I later found out it was Trevor) had decided to help my by taking out the topper from the freezer and setting it on the counter. AHHH! This is terrible!! Frosting takes overnight to freeze hard, but only 30 seconds to 1 minute to thaw out completely. I quickly threw it back in the freezer and wondered what I would do. Having no other options, once I finished frosting the cake I took out the topper and scrapped it off with a knife. It actually worked ok, but the picture was a bit smeared. Oh well.We also did a pinata, but seeing as I was the only adult and had no hooks on the ceiling to hang it from I decided to just throw the pinata at the boys and let them beat it up. This actually went over really well...go figure...8 year old boys like to karate chop stuff. They each took turns kicking, or "chopping" the pinata until all the candy came out. Overall it went great and Trevor had an awesome 8th birthday.

(yes that is Trevor giving bunny ears to his friend..and his friend giving them back....must be an 8 year old boy thing)

Tidbits Durring Breakfast

Well...I AM HOME!!

We pulled in last night around 9:30. We had a great trip and everything (including Trevor's Baptism) went great and I will post more about all that later. For now I am eating breakfast then starting on the job of cleaning out the car, doing all the laundry, cleaning the house....hopefully all before the kids get home from school so that we can put up our Christmas Tree tonight. So I thought I would just share a few tidbits while I sat here eating breakfast.

Most of the trip from our place to Utah is spent in Idaho, which....lets face it, it is not the most "scenic" drive. So usually when I am going through this part of the trip I can have some personal time to meditate. Well....this time when we were going through Idaho, it was not only dark, but foggy, so you could not see any thing! This left me way to much time to think....hmmm...what could I blog about when I get home....lets see....I could blog about:

~~The fact that my kids refuse to unbutton their pants to put them on, they will just squirm, lay down, jump, or wiggle, but will NOT unbutton the pants (staying in one small room and making all 3 of them get dressed at the same time in that same room really opened my eyes to this one)

~~The fact that Bryan thinks that road trips are a lot like Mario Kart (when we were driving at 3-4 in the morning, this was HILARIOUS to me, I thought of several similarities, but then when I thought of them during regular daylight hours it was not that funny at all)

~~The fact that I CAN NOT eat a jaw breaker without biting it. I tried it about 7 times on the drive down and couldn't do it, I just had this CRAZY desire to bite the thing...don't get to close to me I guess, you never know when that desire will hit!

~~The fact that I can rent some redbox movies in Utah, let the kids watch them the entire way home, and return them at a rexbox here....that is just AWESOME!! And the BEST part?......there is NO charge for the AWESOMENESS!

~~The fact that I will have to vacuum for 2 hours to get my car clean when I get home....No, no one wants another vacuum post :)

~~The fact that not matter how much fun you have or how many wonderful memories you make, there is nothing quite like coming home!

Some Ham With Your Dinner?

I have entered the busiest 2 months of the year. Not only are they the busiest holiday seasons, but most of my family's birthdays are in these months also, not to mention the fact that Trevor will be 8 and we have decided to go to Utah for his baptism over Thanksgiving. I find myself rushing from one project to another fighting off cold after cold from lack of sleep.

How do I manage to stay sane?? Lots and Lots of ham:

Ok, so maybe I am not sane, maybe my whole family has lost it....oh well, who will notice right?

The Davis Thankful Tree

For Family Home Evening on Monday we made a thankful tree. I got the idea from my cousins blog and adapted it a little. We decided to go to the park to gather real leaves that had fallen. Then we made a tree trunk out of butcher paper. We wrote things we were thankful for on the leaves and hung them up. It was interesting to hear the things my kids would come up with. Some of them took a little tweaking but I think we covered the basics. I told them that every time they were feeling grumpy or sad they could walk by the thankful tree and remember all the blessings we have. This technique actually worked for me as well when I walked past it with a grumpy baby who had been crying for an hour. I walked past the tree and saw Ashton's name on one of the leaves. Pausing to remember how grateful I was for Ashton to be in my family made it a little easier to deal with the crying fit. I am thankful for all the many blessings in my life.

Posting about Posts

Ahhhh, I finally had a chance to do a little meditation today. You might ask yourself when would a busy mother of 4 have a chance to meditate and the answer would be while I vacuumed out my car. To some this might not be a good chance to find some inner peace, but my car REALLY needed vacuumed out so I had a LONG time to listen to the hum of my new vacuum. New vacuum you might ask, yes, new vacuum. My old vacuum that I learned and grew so much with finally bit the bullet so we bought a new bright green one. The suction was fabulous AND it came with an extra belt and filter, but I noticed when I turned it on that it didn't quite have the same umph as when it was brand new about 2 weeks ago. I knew it was not the belt so I thought hmmm....maybe it is the filter. I pulled out the filter and it was CAKED with dirt. It was a wonder any air got through there, so I pulled out the new filter put it in a vuala! Good as new (It made me wonder if maybe my old vacuum just needs a new filter.....it was over a year without cleaning or replacing it.....) Then I thought "Oh! I should blog about this" (I know...it is pretty sad when you blog so much about vacuums) I thought oh it could be a cute little update to the vacuum post.

As I thought this through I realized there were several blog posts that needed updating so here you go.

Remember how I told you I shrink all my shirts? Well I am proud to say that I hang dry ALL my shirts, however, this means that I have fewer shirts to wear everyday. How can this be?? Well you see, I hang my shirts up in the laundry room to dry, then I leave the laundry room and shut the door behind me (usually in an attempt to forget how much laundry I have) Then fold and put away the "dryer-dried" laundry. Then the next week (or so) when I do laundry again I see my now dry shirts hanging in the laundry room and think "Oh there you are!" Then I walk out and leave them there with the new wet shirts that need to dry thinking that I will just get them all at once. It didn't take long before nearly ALL my shirts were in the laundry room and none were in my closet. *sigh* I don't (yes spell check had to add the apostraphy to this word) think I will win this battle.

I used to post about my weight loss goals and progress, but as I sit here eating gum drops I dint (figured I would throw dint in, instead of don't this time) think I will update that one......However, once while we sat and had ice cream during the Biggest Loser show, we saw a commercial for a local biggest loser contest. The winner would get a 47" flat screen TV! Bryan decided to enter and has been doing GREAT. He now rides the bike not only during biggest loser, but every morning and nearly every night! He is down about 20 lbs and still going strong. I don't think he started out big enough to win the contest, but maybe!

And one more thing. For those that read my messy car post....Bryan wanted me to let you know that "his" car is spotless.....given that my name is on the deed just like his, the kids NEVER ride in his car and the only time it is driven is to work and back, I just wanted to say "good job honey....way to keep "your" car clean!

Valuable Skills

We broke out our wii fit so that we could do some exercising. No our charts are not full yet so the kids can not play any other games on the wii, their friends can not play. The only thing we can do is the wii fit. However, they have gained some valuable skills by exercising on the wii fit. Nathan is a prime example. We have never owned a hula hoop, so naturally he did not have any hula hooping skills, but oh how that has changed! He can do a virtual hula hoop as good as the rest of us. (if you have never seen it the wii fit has a virtual hula hoop game where you swivel your hips around to keep the hula hoops going...pretty good workout if you ask me...anyway) So this begs the question; Can he hula hoop in real life. Well the other day he says "MOM!! Mom!! Watch me Hula Hoop! After watching him (and taking several minutes to recover from the giggles) I grabbed my camera and had him do it again. And now to share with everyone:

Happy Birthday Ashton.....A Little Late

So, you know that week of hibernation where I sewed like a mad woman to finish those amazing costumes? Well during that week, on October 29th to be exact Ashton decided to turn one. I managed to pull myself away long enough to make a cake and buy some presents and even have some family and friends over for cake and ice cream.
Some fun facts about Ashton's first year of life:

*He has NEVER been a good eater
*He started out life a couple of ounces heavier than Trevor, but has since become my most petite baby. He usually weighs in at less that 50%
*He was an early crawler and walker taking his first steps around 9 months and walking all the time by 11 months.
*After learning how to walk he quickly learned how to get up AND down the steps and will now throw his toys down the steps, crawl down and get them, crawl back up the steps and do it all over again.
*There was no fooling him at Trick or Treating time. If people skipped his basket he screamed at them...I kid you not!
*He is a PRO at losing pacifiers....and finding them: One night Bryan and I had searched the house top to bottom, even checking under beds and couches and carseats for a single pacifier. When we finally gave up and figured we would just let him wear himself out and crash without one he came walking in the room sucking on one. We have NO idea where he found it. (I think he has a hidden stash)
*He could not be more loved by his brothers and sister, mother and father.More pictures of the fun day

Ashton ate his cake until there were no crumbs large enough to pick up. He even tried eating his plate. The next morning I found him standing at the garbage can fishing out the cake plates from the party to finish them off as well!