Happy birthday Chuck!

Today is my very sweet husband's 30th birthday. Despite it being such a milestone age, today will be a pretty low-key day for several reasons:

1) Poor guy has to work. He does not subscribe to my school of thought that you shouldn't have to do anything you don't want to do on your birthday, and for that I am grateful. One of us should be responsible and sensible!

2) I gave him his birthday present a month and a half ago when I bought it (a blue and orange striped tie, for the record). I was just really excited to give it to him, you know?

3) He's not super into being the center of attention and prefers low-key celebrations. Yes, we are proof that extreme opposites attract.

I do want to share a few things that I really admire and appreciate about Chuck. The first thing that comes to mind (referring back to #1) is his work ethic. Last month Chuck hit the five-year mark at the juvenile detention facility where he works, and I'm so, so proud of him. He started out there working a rotating swing shift even before he had finished his degree, and since then has worked his way up to shift supervisor. Chuck is exactly the kind of person who should work with troubled youth - he is able to reach out with compassion and mentor them while simultaneously holding them accountable and appropriately managing their incarceration, which is an extremely important and difficult balance. I'm very grateful for Chuck's job stability - which comes from the nature of the field he works in as well as his competence and skill.

He's also a really superb dad. He's so involved and affectionate and fun with our boys. Chuck and Clyde are best friends - as they remind me on a regular basis :). I'm very thankful that Chuck can be Clyde's go-to Star Wars reference since I'm unable to keep all of the different Jedis straight - especially since the Clone Wars show keeps featuring previously obscure ones. Chuck and Will are also best friends; I have accepted the fact that I will never get Will to giggle as much as Chuck does. I am usually the one who does Will's occupational therapy every Thursday, but one day I had to leave so Chuck was the hands-on parent, and the occupational therapist couldn't stop raving about Chuck afterwards. Apparently he had multiple insightful ideas on helping Will work through the activities, and Gretchen was very impressed.

Chuck and Clyde

Chuck and Will

I could keep going, but considering he'll be embarrassed enough that I even wrote this post I'll quickly conclude with how grateful I am to have him as a husband and partner. He's certainly not perfect, but I am even less so and he puts up with me remarkably well :).

Happy birthday darlin'! I love love love you!

Girl time part two.

I spend most of my time with boys, and I'm really okay with that. I love boys. But it's fun to have some girl time, and last weekend I got to take a full two days off from life and hang out with Heidi and Gloria in Utah!

(As always, a serious thank you to my supportive husband, who encouraged me to go and happily took excellent care of the little boys while I was gone).

The trip came together at the last minute; I hopped a ride with Quinn who was headed down to see a mission companion who just got home. At first when I talked to Quinn about going down, he was like, "Don't you talk to Heidi on the phone a lot? Isn't that basically the same as hanging out in person?" Ummm, close but no. . . which is why I was SO bummed that I missed Courtney by a day, seeing pictures of her cute baby bump is not the same as seeing her in person!! But our hour-and-a-half phone conversation yesterday was a good consolation prize :).

Gloria, Heidi, and I had such a nice, relaxing couple of days - Gloria was recovering from being sick AND parent/teacher conferences, Heidi was recovering from her crazy busy college life, and I was recovering from, well, my sweet Clyde and Will :). My personal highlights were enjoying a full night's sleep (two in a row, unheard of at my house), uninterrupted adult conversations, guilt-free facebook time (and stalking with Heid), NO diaper-changing, Gloria's amazing cooking, dinner at Godfather's Pizza, catching up with Dez and a few of Heidi's other friends, church (I love their ward), running with Heidi because we are SUPERSTARS, checking out the samples at Costco . . . it was all wonderful.

(I did miss my boys a LOT but I talked to them several times a day and heard all about the fun they were having eating pizza and watching Star Wars videos. Isn't that what boys' weekends are all about?)

Gloria and Heidi, thank you both again for letting me come and crash your weekend, I love you both!!



P.S. This probably doesn't count as 'girl time', but I had such a nice road trip with Quinner - hearing more of his mission stories, sing-alongs to Garth Brooks, me sneaking in Glee CD's while he slept (and let me drive his car!!).

Girl time part one.

Lynndi and her cute girls made a quick trip to town last week and our guest accommodations lured them to stay at our house for a couple of days, hooray!

Clyde and McKenzie did so well spending so much time together; I don't even think they argued once.

One of their favorite little activities was borrowing the camera to take pictures of each other - this is one of the few pictures of Kenzie where Clyde managed to get her head in the shot.

Kenzie, on the other hand, was an excellent photographer - I now have pictures of every toy in the playroom :).

They also played lots of 'run around and chase each other' games. In their jammies.

The whole gang! I have to say, Chuck was such a superstar during their visit. He very sweetly took care of all four kiddos two (very early) mornings in a row so that Lynndi could come workout too, and one (very long) evening so that we could go visit with some girlfriends and drink delicious hot chocolate.

Will and Paislee in the swing - oh the giggles!

One day we decided to get real ambitious and make peanut butter play-doh. We adapted a recipe online and used a cup of peanut butter, around 2/3 - 3/4 cup of honey, and two cups of powdered sugar (with a little extra at the end when it was a tad too sticky). There are a lot of recipes that use powdered milk instead of sugar, which might help since this did end up reeeeally sweet.

It was so fun, though - the older kids loved playing with it. Will wanted nothing to do with it, and Paislee took after Lynndi and I and mostly just ate it :).

Ahh, reading books before bedtime together. Sooo flippin' precious, right?

We were so happy to have them visit; I loved having more girls in the house and talking (and talking and talking) with Lynndi. We did miss McKay, though - probably Chuck most of all :). See you guys soon!!

Happy birthday Mama Izatt!!

Tomorrow is my wonderful mother-in-law's birthday:
(Terri and Will, July '08)

I really love Terri; she's such a caring, generous person. I have always felt very comfortable around her - Chuck and I joke that it's because our moms are so similar: creative, enthusiastic teachers with a tendency to run late :).

As can be attested to by her four children and four children-in-law (aka 'joiners'), Terri is an amazing mom. She is so diligent about leaving sweet blog comments or facebook notes to let all of us know how much she loves us. Both of Chuck's parents are extremely supportive of their kids, and make sure that they can be in attendance at various special events. Terri is also an excellent cook - something she managed to pass onto all four of her children

(Ohh, a mother-son dance! January 2010)

(Lee, Terri, and Chuck - July '07)

(College graduate Chuck with Terri and Dave, May '07)

Terri is also a terrific grandma to her eight grandkids. She is so patient, and always has fun ideas and activities to do with them.

(Grandma and Clyde, December '06)

(Clyde again, February '07)

(Baby Will and Grandma, May '08)

(Grandma with Courtney, Clyde, George and Mallory - December '08)

(Grandma and Clyde, June '09)

Happy birthday Mom! We hope you have a fabulous day and that Pops spoils you :).

You guessed it: Halloween 2010!

As always, Halloween was a pretty low-key affair around here. We definitely rocked some construction paper decor, because, let's face it: one of my top reasons for having children was to have an excuse to break out the construction paper on a regular basis. And I'm not even joking.

So we had a pumpkin patch...

and some friendly and smiling ghosts. We are not into scary ghosts around here. At all.

A couple of weeks ago we went to a pumpkin patch with Will's speech therapist as a little field trip. Will was in heaven - here he is with Alissa (whom I absolutely love, both because she's an excellent speech therapist and more importantly, because she finds Will as adorable as I do).

Both boys looooved the swings.

Clyde was super into the little straw maze, Will not so much.

Oh, such cute, smiling boys!

Will loved the whole place; he cried and cried when it was time to go. Even though it was super cold - check out his red little nose and cheeks! Funny baby :).

Friday was our ward's trunk-or-treat, so we channeled the force as best we could to don our costumes.
Clyde was Anakin Skywalker (specifically from Star Wars: the Clone Wars).

Chuck was Han Solo.

I was Princess Leia and Will was a little Jedi!

The activities committee had a little photo shoot set-up to record everyone's costumes for judging, so this marked the first of our attempts for a family picture...

Followed by some more after dinner. My motto for picture-taking is to just look and the camera and smile, that way I'm never the one responsible for ruining an otherwise good shot :).

Aren't my kids happy little Jedi knights? I figure that defending peace and justice in the galaxy is a pretty sobering task...

Although we managed to get a smile out of Clyde here!

Smiles from both little boys, yay! Although whatever was going on to our right was apparently much more interesting than Grandma Pam, who was taking the picture.

Clyde's favorite part of the evening was battling people - one of my Cub Scouts Chris (aka Darth Vadar) and later on one of the Young Women in our ward who was dressed as Darth Maul.

Another highlight was winning an award! We were in good company, alongside a stick of dynamite, Dr. Seuss characters, the couple from 'American Gothic', and Captain Moroni among others.

My favorite 'treat' was Brother Murphy's hot apple cider, yummm.

Afterwards, Grandma Pam came back to our house to be read to by young Anakin. There's a chance Clyde slept in that costume that night. . .

That was mostly it for our Halloween festivities. Sunday my dad and Cody and Quinn came over for dinner, which was super fun.

So now it's November, which means it's time for our Thanksgiving tree! It's grown a bit since last year:
Chuck was at work last night and Clyde was very grumpy, so Will and I took it upon ourselves to put the first leaves up. I'm excited to see it get more and more filled in throughout the month!

P.S. Today I'm especially grateful for the right to vote - you should be too, go get it done!!