Three Years

Every day I thank my lucky stars that I get to be JJ's mom, and that he is my boy. I've learned so much since I've become a mother- I feel like I have a deeper understanding of so many things. It's been the best 3 years and I can't wait to see what the future holds for this wonderful little boy.

My Name is John Daker

HA HA HA! I will never be able to sing that hymn again without laughing!

See more funny videos at Funny or Die

St. George

We were finally able to get away for the weekend to see my Dad and Step-mom who moved down to St. George this year. We had such a great time! We love the newest additions to our family- Mollie and Maxie who are "Morkies." Half Yorkies and half Maltese. They were so cute and fun to play with! The warm weather was SO NICE! I know that everyone else is blogging about how much they love the fall, and the cooler temps etc. but I HATE FALL! There I said it. I am a summer-time girl. I NEED the sun! So needless to say, it was so nice to have an escape to a much sunnier and somewhat warmer place. I've already decided that I'm going to go again during tax season with just the kids.

James and JJ near Tuachan

We LOVED the Washington City Pool! It is so cool because the bottom of the pool is like a soft rubber material instead of scratchy plaster. Here the bucket is about to tip over. (That freaked JJ out!)

Swimming with Daddy

Swimmer Girl! It was so cute, she was splashing and kicking her legs so hard!

We got to visit Bogey, the talking parrot across the street. This picture pretty much sums up what JJ thought about it.

Singing on Grandpa's karaoke machine. Earplugs, anyone?

Playing at the park

In front of Grandpa's water feature in the back yard. JJ loved helping grandpa turn it on and off.

With Grandma, Grandpa, Mollie, and Maxie

Photo Tag

Thanks for the tag, Piele! Ok, so here is the 6th picture in the 6th folder in my files.

What the heck is THAT?? you ask yourself! This is a birthday tradition that James and I started in Logan. I have carried on a passionate love affair with donuts that began when I was a little girl and my Dad would occasionally take us to Winchell's (does that even still exist?) on Saturday mornings. There is nothing better in this world than a white cake donut with white frosting and rainbow sprinkles!!! When I went to SLCC I was on a first name basis with the ladies at the 7-11 down the street from the building where I had classes because every day after class I would go and get one of these babies. I was in HEAVEN my first 2 years at USU when I would also get one every morning at the TSC, and I lamented the time when all of my donut suppliers slowly gave way to the evil empire of Tommy's donuts. (Bleh!)

Anyway, every year on my birthday James gives me a big flaming pyramid stack of donuts instead of a cake. And every year he insists on putting the exact number of candles for how old I am turning. I think that I count 23 in this pic. I'm pretty sure this is the first year we did it, because you can see that these are actually glazed and not cake donuts. After this I made him pre-order from a bakery. And now to end this story happily, I will just mention that James works just a couple blocks from Banbury Cross! (I give them a 9 out of 10 on my donut scale- they get docked because their sprinkles aren't in primary colors, and sometimes there are too many of them!)

Facts in Five

Ok, I've been tagged by Melody to give facts about James.

Five things James Loves:
1. Me
2. Our Kids
3. The Wii
4. Football
5. The Gospel- it goes without saying, right?

Five things on James' To Do List:
1. Take the CPA exam
2. Pay off those darned student loans
3. Finish fixing up our backyard
4. Back up all of his music on the computer
5. Win the game of Madden he's playing right now

Five favorite Snacks:
1. Refrigerated Snickers (How is that different from room temp??)
2. Oreos
3. Homemade chocolate chip cookies
4. Chocolate covered raisins
5. Fruit Snacks

Five Things You Might Not Know About James:
1. His graduating class had 20 people in it (5 girls 15 boys)
2. I was his first girlfriend
3. He served a mission in San Fernando, California
4. He had his appendix taken out when he was 10
5. He was a junior in the Electrical Engineering program at Utah State when we got married. I thought I was marrying an engineer! But accounting suits him better- he really loves what he does.

Five Places James has Lived:
1. Willow Lake, South Dakota
2. Tulsa, Oklahoma
3. Mammoth, California
4. Logan, UT
5. Salt Lake City, UT

Five of James' Quirks:
1. He cannot make a normal smile in pictures. At one point his roomate's mother seriously thought that James had a mental disability because of the faces he makes in pictures!
2. He doesn't like to drive- if you ever see us in the car together I'll be driving. (This works out well because I'm a control freak and I love to drive)
3. He is constantly cracking his knuckles, neck, back, etc.
4. He loves to make charts and graphs of his scores on video games. (A true accountant. NERD ALERT!!)
5. He obsessively checks to make sure his car is locked. He will lock the door, check it 3 times, walk half way across a parking lot and then turn around and go back to start it all over again. (I keep asking him, Who's going to steal an 18 year old car???? And if they break in what are they going to steal, the snow scraper???)

I tag:

1. Amanda

2. Corinne

3. Joanna

4. Dana

5. Lindsay

The Scarecrow Festival

Last Night we went to the Scarecrow Festival at Thanksgiving Point with my Mom and my sister's family. It was cold, but we had so much fun! They had lots of activities for the kids, but the best part was all of the inflatable slides and bounce houses. I have never seen JJ so excited about anything before- it was so funny! It was exhausting climbing up all of those things with 30 extra pounds to carry! (Sometimes it was downright precarious!) I guess that counts as my workout- at least for a couple days!

Adam and Eve...Not Adam and Steve

Quiz

Quiz stolen from Katherine's blog. :)

Take the Quiz and Share Your Results!

Fang Face

When I was a baby I was lovingly referred to as "Fang Face" due to a trait that I had and that McKenna has now inherited. My two front teeth were the last ones to come in and my Mom was worried that I maybe didn't have them at all!

I think that her little fangs are so adorable! I was hoping that they would stay this way at least until Halloween, but I can see her two front teeth coming in now. :( So I've been taking lots of pictures while I can.



And here's one of a naughty boy who was playing in the mud. I hosed him off as much as I could outside, but there was still a lot of dirt in the bottom of the bathtub after this one!

A Success Story 20 Years in the Making

When James was around 9 years old he would play a game called Castlevania on his Nintendo. In the game you are a little guy with a whip who hunts vampires, werewolves, and other monsters. He was never able to beat Dracula who is the very last villan that you fight before you win the game.

Well, now that we have the Wii system, you can go and buy a lot of retro games online. (I, myself am a Dr. Mario kind of a girl.) Of course when James saw that he could buy Castlevania for $5.00 he remembered his vendetta against Dracula from 20 years before.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I am pleased to announce that today through all the blood, sweat, and tears, James finally defeated Dracula. As James puts it, "I've accomplished everything I want to in life. I can die a happy man." (Don't worry, guys. I'm pretty sure he's just kidding.) James was on top of the world. Nothing could take away the exhilirating feeling of saving the world from a murderous villan like Dracula...

UNTIL.... He saw what happens after you defeat Dracula. Which is... well nothing. Just credits; that's it. What a letdown!
Oh, well. At least the world is safe now!

Twilight Trailer Spoof

If you're excited for the Twilight movie like I am, then you've probaby seen the trailer. Here is a spoof that I found on youtube. Some parts are just plain dumb, but some of them had me laughing so hard! Especially the part about the Burger King guy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dompotjTeIA

I May Never Cook Again!

Last month my sister started a Make Ahead Meal Group with her friends in her neighborhood, and asked me if I wanted to join too. This has been so awesome! Each person makes and freezes 12 meals (you make 12 of the same recipe) and then we all meet once a month to trade meals. So yesterday I came home and crammed both my regular freezer and chest freezer with meals that I just have to throw in the oven or crock pot. There are rules to the group so that everything stays fair. For example, you have to spend at least $80.00, you can't experiment on the group with a new recipe, and each meal has to feed 6 adults. Since these meals are so big and are supposed to feed 6 adults, they each last us for a long time. (Everyone with a 2 year old knows how much they eat, and obviously McKenna doesn't eat anything but baby food yet.) So I'll make a new one for about 2 or 3 nights in a row and then we'll just rotate the leftovers for lunches and dinners.

It is pretty stressful planning, shopping for, making, freezing, and transporting 12 frozen meals each month. If you think about it, I've just fed 72 people all at once. But the reward is sooooo worth it. When I think about all the time I've saved planning menus, writing grocery lists, going to the store once or twice a week- and out here there isn't a store within 20 minutes of my house; I just love doing this meal group. Now I mainly just have to go to the store for milk and produce. HOORAY!

Here is a picture of about half of the meals that I got yesterday.

The following is the result of what happens when I have too much time on my hands...

The Reasons Why I didn’t Like the Twilight series
Put down your pitchforks and hear me out!

1. First and foremost, Edward is NOT a nice guy! Ok, pretend that he’s not a hot vampire for just a minute. The first time he meets Bella, he is really mean to her. Then when he finally does start talking to her he lies to her. Then he goes around staring at her and physically forcing her to do things that she doesn’t want to do. (Making her ride in his car when she wants to walk home, etc.) Once they start dating, Edward interrogates Bella for hours and hours and then spies on her at night when she’s sleeping. CREEPY! If this were a book about just a regular guy and girl in high school, we’d all be yelling, “Run away, Bella! He’s a crazy stalker!” Now that I think about it, this sounds like the premise of a bad Lifetime movie. Please explain to me why everyone thinks that overbearing behavior in a man is romantic?
Also, once Edward left Bella in New Moon I was completely and totally finished with him. In my mind that was absolutely unforgivable. It wasn’t the fact that he left her that bothered me, but the way that he left her.

2. Bella is annoying. She spends the first 50 pages of the book complaining about the weather in Forks. And then she spends the next 50 pages complaining about high school and all of the boys who are infatuated with her. During the whole first book, I was like what’s wrong with Mike Newton? It just really bugs me that Bella is so shallow that she overlooks Edward’s temper and the way he treats her because he is hot. Well, I can appreciate a hot guy just as much as the next girl, but at the end of the day you want to end up with a man who’s not going to beat you in 10 years for overcooking the pork chops, you know what I mean?

3. The fact that Bella doesn’t end up with Jacob. I LOVED the book, New Moon. I totally and completely fell in love with Jacob. He is a sweet, receptive, reliable guy that becomes Bella’s sunshine. He picks up the pieces of Bella’s broken heart and loves her completely knowing that she may never love him back. (Sigh…) He is her soft place to fall. He tells her the truth, whether it is hard for her to hear or not. Bella can have a normal life if she chooses him. When it became apparent that Bella and Edward were getting married, I just really didn’t care about the story anymore.

4. The fact that the books are marketed toward young adults. I would not want my teenage daughter to read these books. The book Twilight basically conveys the message, “Go ahead and trust your teenage boyfriend to stop himself when he needs to. Don’t worry about taking any precautions for keeping yourself safe.” Ok, I realize that this story is just fantasy, but does a 12 year old girl really get that? Not to mention all of the secrecy from Bella’s parents, and how much time Edward spends in her room and in her bed.

5. The fact that despite all of the reasons listed above, I still got sucked into the books. (Can you tell?) I am a little embarrassed to admit that I really did enjoy them. When I first read Twilight, I just didn’t get what all the hoopla was about. But I decided to try it out again, since everyone else seemed to love the series so much. I decided not to be critical of the writing style and some of the messages portrayed and just to make them my guilty pleasure. Once I did that I really did get into the books. I thought that Bella was really relatable (albeit, stupid) and some of the storylines really reminded me of high school. And when the whole Jacob thing got going I was really hooked. I didn’t like Breaking Dawn though- that was just a little too over the top for me. But overall I thought the books were entertaining and a nice break from reality. And in the end, isn’t that what a book is supposed to be?

All By Myself

This week James went to Jackson Hole to do an audit. I wish I could have gone with him! My family had a cabin in Driggs, Idaho about an hour from Jackson when I was growing up, so that whole area holds a special place in my heart and my childhood memories. But it's really not fun for him either, since all he is doing is working.

So my goal for this week is not to become isolated and weird. I'm trying to get at least some adult human interaction once a day! Even if that means depositing a check at the bank or just window shopping for an hour or two. Luckily there are parks in our neighborhood where moms sometimes congregate. And I am really glad that I can have conversations with JJ too now- even though they are very basic. (They are sometimes very entertaining.)

Also, I just finished the whole Twilight saga. I have a real love/hate relationship with these books. I think I'll blog more on this later (since I have the time.) But I'm interested in what other people thought about the books. Did you like them?

Everyone needs a big brother

What would McKenna do without her big brother?

She Loves her JJ

And he loves her too. (Most of the time)

She needs someone to climb on daddy with.

And to help with life's challenges.

JJ These Days

Every day around 7:00am or so JJ and I have the following conversation:

JJ: I need poscal (popsicle) Mommy.

Me: It's too early for a popsicle right now. You need to eat breakfast.

JJ (After some giving it some consideration): How 'bout orange poscal?

Me: How about toast?

JJ: How 'bout red?

Me: How about Eggos?

JJ: How 'bout green?

Me: How about cereal?

JJ: How 'bout purple?

This is a running dialogue between me and JJ for the rest of the day. I just alternate the type of food I want him to eat depending on what time of day it is. I am sooo tired of hearing about popsicles all day long, but on the other hand, they are a very powerful bargaining tool. We can pretty much get JJ to do anything we ask him to do if we bribe, umm I mean positively reinforce him with a popsicle.

We' ve finally entered the 21st Century!

We just made the change from dial-up to wireless internet this last week. Hey don't give me any flack, it's not like I've been churning my own butter, people! Whenever we would mention to someone that we had dial-up they would either say, "WHY?" or "They still have that?" Yes, they still have it. And it was only $9.95 a month. That is why we had it.

But anyway, here we are, and I'm trying to figure out this whole blog thing, so be patient with me. We are excited to keep in touch with our friends this way!