Marilyn's Favorite Hobby

Marilyn will "color" all day, all night, on the walls, on the couch, on the floor, on paper...we are trying HARD to teach her that paper is the only place to color.  It is pretty adorable!

Hey, I Made This!

I recently have been following a website ana-white.com.  Ana White is a woman from Alaska who is encouraging women to do things we probably wouldn't do normally.  She posts plans for all kinds of furniture (beds, dressers, tables, chairs, everything). I have been following this website for a while, trying to get up the courage to try something out.  I wanted to start with a toddler bed for Marilyn, but then I thought that was a huge project for my first try...so I decided on this bench.  Here is the link to the plans

http://ana-white.com/2011/02/vintage-honeysuckle-pink-step-stool-plans.html

Check it, You will love it!

Here are pictures of my project!

If you know Marilyn, you definatly know Elmo...

If you know anything about Marilyn, you know all about Elmo.  Our lives revolve around Elmo...we eat off Elmo plates, with Elmo forks, watch Elmo's World and read Elmo books.  Just this week we have entered the world of Abbie and her flying fairy school and Ernie and his great adventures with Bert.  This is giving us a little (stress little) bit of variety.  Thank Heaven! These darling pictures are of Marilyn on a normal night, doing normal things...all Elmo all the time!

Marilyn likes to make Elmo fly...so cute!

After all the cake and suprises...

Tom's birthday week was full of fun, crazy food that made us fat, and lots of family time.  We had one last little thing to take care of.  We had to celebrate with our BFF's J, J, and A. Jake, Janelle and Ayden used to live next door to us when we first moved to St George, they instantly became our best friends and here we are almost 3 years later.  Tom had a crazy work week during the week of his birthday so we had to celebrate with them on Monday morning.  We went to Village Inn.  Which is delicious.  We watched the "ROMEO" club eating breakfast together and we wondered what ROMEO stood for through our whole meal, finally we found out that it stood for "Really Old Men Eating Out", cute right? We vowed that when we are really old we will be ROFEO's (really old friends eating out).  Yay! Happy Birthday Tom (again)!

This is Marilyn and Ayden eating powdered doughnuts together.  They are in love. 

Happy, Happy Birthday Tommy Dear!

HAPPY HAPPY BIRTHDAY THOMAS!! February 16th is a very important day in our family.  Our Dad (Thomas) is 28! He is almost an old man, which means I am almost old, which is freaky...but we had a good day, despite this fact.  Tom woke up to the beautiful sounds of me and Marilyn (and Maggie) singing "Happy Birthday".  Maggie and Marilyn howl along with me as I sing at the top of my lungs.  I called him all morning, making sure he remembered it was his birthday and that we LOVE him like crazy.  Unfortunately, Tom had to go to Coyote Springs so he couldn't come home for lunch, but he knew we love him, he got to ride alone so he was able to listen to his book on tape.  He rocked the face off his meeting, and then headed home.  We were pretty lucky that he could come home at 4 and celebrate with us! My parents sent a present a week ago.  It was in huge box and it was sitting in front of our tv all week.  Tom has been DYING to open it...but we resisted and finally the time came! He ripped it open and here is his face...cute right?

Thomas loves this birthday present...it is a HUGE remote control airplane called the Super Club.  It is completely radical, and it is going to make splash at the park. It has a half mile range, a 47.75 inch wingspan and anti crash technology.   Tom already has little kids following him around when he takes his little Champ out, but we are going to have to plan a lot more time at the park.  Marilyn was pretty impressed with the plane and it was hard to keep her little hands off!

Please excuse Marilyn's pantless self, she won't keep her pants on these days!

This is how humongous the wings/body are...crazy right?

Marilyn and I got him a new climbing harness, and unfortunately we were unable to keep it a secret (hence the different clothes).  I think he was pretty excited...what do you think?

Since Tom had mutual on his birthday we couldn't do much during the evening.  Kristin (our neighbor/BFF)

offered to watch our little Marilyn so we could go out and celebrate Tom's birthday.  We loved being able to spend some time alone, and were so grateful that Kristin offered to do this for Tom's birthday...best present ever! (Thanks a million Kristin)

I made these cupcakes for Tom to take to mutual...pretty fabulous right?

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All and all, it was a pretty fantastic birthday! It makes us excited for many more birthdays to come, more fabulous cupcakes, a little rock climbing and alot of time at the park with our newly acquired Super Cub!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TOM! WE LOVE YOU!

New Shoes (aka New Life)

 

I got 2 new pairs of shoes.  Now, if you know me at all, you know I LOVE LOVE LOVE shoes.  Me and my mom have a shoe thing...we love shoes. So much so that sometimes when I go visit, I don't pack shoes so I can wear hers the whole trip. (really...true story) I have recently become fond of crazy high heels, I love Jessica Simpson's shoe line...because they are completely impractical, which is what makes them perfect for something like dinner out with my man or church.  As for my new lovlies, I have to thank my Mar Mar and Far Far for the first pair. I got them with the gift card they gave me for Christmas.  Thanks Mar Mar and Far Far!! I LOVE them!

The second, I have to thank Andrea, we went for some girl time while she was here and she took me to TJ Maxx, where I never go for fear I will cave and buy everything in the store.  I was strong and bought just one pair of awesomely fierce, fabulously high pumps. As we were checking out all I could think of were how many people must have passed these by in order for me to have them. How did it happen that these were the last ones in the store my size and clearance for $10??? I didn't know how to live without them for one more second after I saw them.  Here they are, give them a round of applause......

Family Is A Fun Thing To Have Around (part 2)

After our Zion National Park adventures, we had a few more things on our list.  Namely, making homemade fortune cookies (the next thing on my best bites must make list), and going to Snow Canyon State Park.  We decided to make homemade fortune cookies while Thomas was at work and Jeremy was on a bike ride.  It was a little crazy, and we went through one hideous failure...but eventually we got it! We wrote our fortunes, baked the cookies, hurry hurry hurried to take them off the cookie sheet, molded them into the famous fortune cookie shape, let them dry and then dipped them in chocolate and decorated them! They turned our fabulous! I got the recipe from this website  http://www.ourbestbites.com/ check it, it's awesome!

We went to the sand dunes at Snow Canyon.  Of course all the kids LOVE LOVE LOVED it...it was a little bit of a hike to get out there, but once we got there it was awesome.  We ran around and got really really dirty and sandy.  All 4 of the kids were barely recognizable with the sand in their hair and clothes, but we had a good time.  We took some family pictures (obviously) and they turned out super cute. 

Again, matching...of course!

Marilyn and her cousins loved dragging their bums down the hills instead of walking, this was all they needed for a good time. 

Seriously, we really walked this far...without dying.

All and all, sand and dirt and everything else, it was such a fun weekend, such a fun day.  We are so grateful that Andrea and Jeremy and their kids came to visit.  We are so happy that we have family that are willing to leave the snowy north and visit us in southern Utah.  COME AGAIN SOON!!