I Resolve Not To Have A Resolution...Wait, that doesn't make sense.

Don't you hate New Year Resolutions.  I do.  They seem so forced and by February people are back to their old ways.  So I'm not making a resolution this year.  Nope.  I'm just going to do things in life differently (alright, alright, Its the same thing, I know!)

For starters...I have given up soda.  This is no easy feat.  I am totally in love with soda, and its been my crutch for years (or decades).  Especially pepsi and mountain dew.  This may be the hardest thing I will ever do.  Can you go to rehab for soda addiction?

Second...I'm working out.  FIVE days a week!  That's right, I'm insane.  I'm going from periodically working out whenever I feel the urge to working out five days a week.  I have a plan in order to not get bored, and I'm really hoping that this isn't the resolution life change that disappears come February.

Third.....Nightly family prayers.  We are terrible about this.  I don't know why.  We read to all the kids every night, this should just fit in too.  But what can I say?  We're lazy, and by 8:30 pm I'm SO DONE with kids.

Fourth.....Paying our tithing.  I'm not ashamed to admit that we struggle with this. Okay, I'm a little ashamed.  Its hard for us when we are financially struggling to give away 10 percent of our hard earned money to the church which isn't struggling financially at all.  We really need to work on this.  Its so hard.

And finally....I need to work on being nice.  This sounds stupid when I read it out loud.  But seriously.  I don't think I'm very nice.  I'm mean.  When my kids start to get on my nerves, I'm mean.  When people I come into contact with say things that I don't agree with or just seem ignorant, I'm mean (maybe not to their face, but I definitely think mean things).  I don't want to be mean, so I'm going to be nice.

If  you have any advice for me on how to keep up with my life changes I'm open to it. Also,does anyone want to work out too? Then we can be held accountable to each other!  We don't have to live near each other (since I don't live near anyone) Just make a daily or weekly report or whatever.  LMK.

Happy 2012!  Here's to hoping the Mayans were wrong!

Would you like some human flesh with your cheese?

We got a new fancy cheese-grater.  Its cool.  The cheese falls into this little plastic container.  We were quite excited about this beautiful cheese-grater.

But it turns out that this fancy new cheese-grater was created by Satan himself.  It craves human flesh!  It tried to eat me....and somewhat succeeded.  I'm afraid of it now.

Here is my knuckle immediately after the cheese-grater took a bite out of it.  It gushed blood for a good twenty minutes, and hurt like crazy!

Later that night I removed the band-aid to show Scott the wound and apply some Neosporin.  As soon as the band-aid came off it started gushing blood again for 20 more minutes.  Scott tried to convince me to super glue it.  I wouldn't do it!

I can't bend my knuckle.  I'm struggling to type and do my amigurumi projects.  Every time I do bend the knuckle blood escapes the band-aid.  Here is what it looks like today, 24 hours after the initial attack.  My knuckle may never heal.  Its so gross.  Darn you Satan and your evil cheese-grater from hell!

Maybe I will super glue it....If it doesn't stop bleeding in the next day or two.

Christmas is over and I'm not at all sad!

When I was a kid I remember the thinking "Oh no!  Christmas is over.  Its an entire year before we get to have fun like that again!"  Now I think, "Yes!  Christmas is over!  It's an entire year before I have to have that kind of stress again!"  Not that I don't enjoy Christmas, but I am definitely glad when its over!  This year Dexter suddenly got sick on Christmas Eve, and ended up puking during the night.  Good thing Santa came between puking sessions.  He started feeling better by evening Christmas day...Thank goodness it was just a 24 hour thing! Even bigger thank goodness that no one else got it!  Anyway here are some pics from our holiday!

Kids in their Christmas Jammies...Echo was asleep through this chunk of Christmas Eve so she missed out on the pics..sad.

 Almost everyone got red jammies....not even planned!

 Corbin and Dallin are always best buds!

 Dexy with his stuff (he has an obsession with Sonic the Hedgehog right now)

 Corbin with his stuff (also obsessed with Sonic, although, not to the same extent as Dex).

 Ivers with her stuff

 Echo was a champ for pictures!  What a cutie!

 Corbin and Mini-Corbin

 Ivy and Mini-Ivy

 Dexter and Mini-Dexter

 Scott and his new Zoidberg (He's from Futurama. Look it up if your confused.  Unless your confused as to why Scott is about to eat Zoidberg....That you can't really look up, and I'm confused about it too!).

 Dexter and Grandpa taking a much needed afternoon nap!

I hope you all had a Merry Christmas too!

Breathing with relief

I think we all know from my last post that December has been a little stressful for me, but luckily, I'm feeling a lot of relief now.  I finished my etsy orders and sent them off.  I finished all the kids' homemade Christmas toys.  I sent my mom a gift. I actually cleaned.  I finished up the Christmas letter, printed it out, had pictures printed at walmart and finally got them sent! I made delicious almond cakes for family and friends.  And finally, and most importantly, I got all the Christmas shopping done! (None of these would have been possible if it weren't for a lot of help from Scott!  So thanks babe, you're the best!)  Ahhhhh. It feels good to have it all done. 

One of my completed Etsy orders.  It's Thumbelina!  Remember that movie?  Me neither, but the customer was VERY happy with how she turned out.

 Here is one of the consequences of having a messy house...The kids make replica's of themselves with dirty clothes and toys.......No more of that!!

 Another completed Etsy order. This one is Anastasia..I actually remember that movie!

A very unappealing picture of an almond cake.  It may not look great, but I tell you they are heavenly!

And here are the kids homemade gifts.  They are custom mini's!  I think they turned out absolutely adorable!  From left to right: Corbin, Dex and Ivy!

And now I have blogged.  I'm feeling good!

This to-do list is not working out...

My "to-do before Christmas" list is long. Too long. Its getting on my nerves. I CANNOT for the life of me seem to get it all done. Christmas is like 2 weeks away. I'm starting to stress out.

I haven't done ANY shopping yet. NONE. I hate shopping. I hate crowds. I dread it. I should really get all my Christmas shopping done in August or something. But I don't. I don't even have a list of what I need to get yet. Wow, this is looking bad. (note to self, 2012 Christmas shopping to be done in august. I like that idea).

I planned on making my kids each a toy for Christmas. So far only Ivy's is done. I keep getting etsy orders that people pay me to get done, and therefore jump up on the list. I swear I spend nearly every spare minute crocheting (except now, when I'm blogging) I really need to get them done next week, because after that school is out and then I won't be able to work on them during the day anymore. I wish my fingers moved faster, and that after 10:00 pm my eyes didn't burn so much.

My house is messy. Dishes are piled in the sink, mountains of laundry are waiting to be folded and put away (at least they're clean), and the bathrooms....oh the bathrooms.....I can't even talk about the bathrooms. I think we should just move out of this disaster!

Mom-I don't think I'm going to be able to crochet you a present for Christmas! I'm sorry I'm the worst daughter ever. I've got an idea of something I can get you guys instead (if I ever get my butt out of the house to shop), and I promise I'll get it done later when things slow down. You can revoke your gift if you want....

I'm excited for January!

He's Watching You!

By "he" I mean the elf. The elf on the shelf. For my birthday last month, my sister-in-law gave me an elf on the shelf. Her family has had an elf for years. He comes the day after Thanksgiving and hangs out in various places throughout the house to basically scare the kids into being good. This sounds a bit harsh, which isn't how I mean it. Its just taking the concept of "Santa knows if you've been naughty or nice" to a new level. Santa sends his elf to our house to watch the kids for him, then the elf reports back to Santa while the kids' sleep and tells him either, the kids were terrors that threw the cinnamon pine cones and every pair of sock down the stairs, or they were little angels who put all the toys away after school AND made their beds without being asked. Then he hides in a new place every morning. The elf knows all, and sees all.

Except....

So does Corbin, and he isn't buying it. He is unconvinced that the elf is real. The first time he saw that elf he recognized it. "Dallin and Bowen have one of those!" He said, "Why would they have one a long time ago and we just got one?" A very valid question. I hate lying to my kids (which is why we didn't get one of these years ago), so I just pretended to not know why. Later when Daddy came home from work Corbin said to him, "I don't think the elf is real. I think he's just a toy that you guys move around after we go to sleep." Does nothing get by this kid?! We didn't raise a dummy! It doesn't really matter anyway. Corbin is such a good kid, it really makes no difference if the elf is watching him or not. It's Dexter that needs to believe in the elf. He gets in trouble and it is no surprise that several times a day I catch the other kids reminding him that the elf is watching, and even more times that I remind him. For him its working, and that is awesome.

And whether or not Corbin believes that he's real does not come into play every morning when he rushes out of his room to find where the elf is hiding. He LOVES being the first one to find him.

Proof that I'm not a grown up

This post is kind of ridiculous and makes no sense. But read it anyway, and then watch the video clip from Conan last night, and you wont regret it. Anywho, here's some random stuff you might like to know (but probably not).

Did you know that Mom's don't get sick days? Even when you are so sick you can barely move, someone still has to get food in the kids' stomachs, and take them to school. I wish there were sick days for moms. I'm sick. I have been since we got home from our Thanksgiving vacation. I hate it. My nose is raw. I'm barely sleeping. The snot situation is completely out of control. No one else is sick. What the crap is wrong with my immune system. I'm always the one who catches everything. Its not fair. I suppose I should be grateful that the kids don't have it too, but its hard being grateful when I'm so miserable.

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Echo still doesn't sleep through the night. She's six months old! I think she should be sleeping through the night by now. We're trying to force her into soothing herself when she wakes up, but so far it isn't working. I swear she's rebelling too. She used to wake up once around 5 or 6 am. We started to try and get her to self soothe on Monday and now, the last two nights she has woken up before 2 am and can not be talked into sleeping. Its frustrating. Any advice?

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And finally. I turned 30 last month. This does not mean that I am in fact a grown up. My proof came last night while watching Conan. There was a dude on that I have never heard of before (Nick Kroll) and he told a story.....a story about pooping his pants. I know, I know. How immature. I can not express how hard I laughed. I couldn't breathe. I had a coughing fit. Tears poured down my face. It was so funny, and I feel totally ashamed for thinking so, and even more ashamed for admitting it now. But for those adults who aren't afraid to act totally immature, join with me in watching the first five minutes of this clip and laugh about someone who has encountered the tragedy of pooping his pants at the age of 33. I tell you it is FUNNY! But for those of you too mature to laugh at poop, skip it, and move on.

This is a long clip, but you only have to watch the first five minutes for the poo story. Its totally worth 5 minutes of your time.