Things I'm Kind of Obsessed With Right Now

I thought it would be fun to do a post about certain things I'm really loving these days!

These are in no particular order, just so you know!

-Dry shampoo- I was introduced to this blessed product by Kim when we were in NYC (my favorite city, in case you were wondering)! It is AMAZING! I used to wash my hair every.single.day. And every single day (pretty much) it got put up in a wet bun because I didn't want to take the time to dry and flat-iron it (who's got time for that?!) Since I've been using dry shampoo I've been able to go at least 3 days between washings. It adds so much volume and freshens your head right up! One day soon I may do a post about all the fun new hairstyles I've learned how to do (also because of Kim).

-My heart ring- Don't be fooled, I bought this for myself. Ryan didn't get it. But I do think it's pretty cute and it does make me happy!

-Blogging- I started our blog in 2008 as a way to keep the family informed of our goings-ons...mainly because of Colin! As it turns out, I absolutely love it! I get a lot of satisfaction out of posting pictures and stories and I get even more satisfaction when I go back and read the stories and look at the pictures. There are so many things I've posted that I've forgotten about and it's awesome to be able to look back and be reminded of all the funny things the kids have done and said. For instance, I was reading some old stories last night and I had forgotten that Colin used to talk in the third person-for years, I think. How in the world I forgot that I don't know.  One of my favorite things ever are our blog books! We've got one from every year I've been doing this (the first year and a half is combined) and they're such a fun way to keep our family history! I'm so grateful to have these keepsakes!

-Nashville- The TV show. I love it. I'm not really sure why all the TV shows seem to go on week long hiatus's these days but Wednesday nights when Nashville's actually on make me very happy!

-Brett Eldredge-He was the first opener at Taylor Swift (you didn't think I could do a things I'm obsessed with post and not mention her, did you?) We only heard his first song the first night but heard it all on night 2 and he's great! It's pretty hard for me to be interested in songs I've never heard before. It usually takes at least a couple times to familiarize myself with them before I like them but I was hooked from the beginning. You should YouTube him. Seriously! You won't regret it!

-This guy-Colin is just so funny and sweet--and clearly adorable! He's the best big brother ever and is such a great helper! He's doing so great at school and is so much fun to hang out with. He's absolutely hilarious and it's so much fun getting to have conversations with him now that he's getting  so old! (Conversations were always fun with him though!) We are so incredibly blessed to be his parents and to have him in our family!!!

Peyton's baby blues-They are so vibrant! She's adorable and hilarious just like her brother. Her personality is definitely starting to shine and she is a hoot! She's definitely opinionated and sometimes hot-headed but I think we knew that was a possibility! She's starting to say a bunch of animal noises which is so cute! We'll have to get a video of it! She loves babies and puppies. The other day we were at Target and she saw a book with Clifford on it and started screaming when we left that aisle because she wanted it...we're definitely in temper territory these days! The past few days she's been sitting in front of the trash can and giggling because she can see herself in it. She'll give it hugs and say "baby." Absolutely adorable! We sure do love these kiddos!!!

18 Month Stats

Peyton's 18 months! Crazy!

She had her 18 month check up last week. Here are her stats:

Weight: 26 lbs 14 ounces (89th %)

Height: 33 inches (82nd %)

 

I'd compare her to Colin at 18 months but I can't seem to find any place that I wrote it down. Oh well!

She looks great and isn't having any issues! I do think she's got separation anxiety right now, proven by her hatred of nursery! She DOES NOT like going to the doctors. We had to go at the beginning of the month to have her head checked again (Remember the skull fracture, it's healed!) She screamed bloody murder for her CT and we were literally in with the neurosurgeon for 30 seconds and she cried the whole time. Good grief! When we had her check up last week she cried as soon as I put her down to be weighed and measured which is probably the least bad part of a check up!

 

We had to go to my doctor's office today because I needed to get a TB test done for work. As soon as we left the waiting room and walked towards the treatment room she started crying. I told her it was for me not her. The crying subsided a little bit- into obvious fake cries and she got off my lap and stood as far away from me as she could. Silly girl!

 

She continues to talk up a storm. Last week I was wiping her nose and she said "go away." She repeats a lot of things we say and surprises us every day with phrases she's caught onto. A couple nights ago she said "shake and bake" a quote Ryan and Colin are finding quite hilarious these days!

 

She goes to bed at 8 and wakes up anywhere between 8:30 and 10--usually closer to 8:30. She takes a nap when Colin's at school (about 2 hours). I think she'd sleep longer but I always have to wake her up to go pick him up.

 

She's becoming VERY difficult to deal with in stores. She refuses to sit in the cart and if I force her in and buckle her up she always manages to stand up anyways. I usually end up lugging her around until my arm can't take it anymore and then I find some food to buy and tell her she can have some if she sits in the seat (Saturday it was goldfish, today Oreo's!)

 

She's also become a little violent towards Colin. If he annoys her she smacks him in the face. Sometimes even if he's not annoying her. I guess it's good that she can hold her own but boy is this girl a spit fire!

 

She sure does love Colin though! When we were at her doctor's appointment I was holding her and sitting on the table and Colin was sitting behind us on the table as well. When the doctor was talking to us she was like "Kaw kaw." I thought it was cute that she was making sure he was there with us!

 

She's hilarious and adorable and we love her so much!!!

She has learned the art of dunking her Oreo in the milk!

Crazy Little Thing Called Life

Life seems to be so crazy and busy right now. At the same time I feel like the to-do list is ever growing and nothing ever gets checked off...not sure how exactly that happens!

I've spent the last couple nights working on our taxes. Let me tell you, that is an insane pain in the butt! We've also been busy over here working on the house and getting things packed up. For what? We're putting the house on the market. One of us is super excited about it and one is just trying to be supportive (well really 3 are trying to be supportive- Colin doesn't want to move either, Peyton has no opinion but I'm putting her on our team!)

After 5 1/2 years of Ryan having an hour commute both ways he's kind of ready for a change! When we bought this house his company was getting ready to build in Ballpark Village which would have cut his commute in half. It fell through though and now he works even further out. So we're putting the house up in hopes that it will sell and we can move somewhere on the other side of the river. (Ryan's also not opposed to moving somewhere else completely but we will assess that situation when our house hopefully sells).

In an attempt to make it easier to keep the house clean all the time we've boxed up a bunch of toys and other odds and ends the kids like to drag around the house. All of this has been a little stressful for me but I'm trying to be supportive!

Anyway, enough of this. Here are some pictures from the past 2 days!

Ready for the snow!

Our snowman!

Colin thought he'd draw some monkeys on the kitchen table

 

Peyton scratched him at breakfast this morning

Life Goal: Accomplished

So I was reading my blog post from the last Taylor Swift concert that I went to and I said: "One of my new life goals is to get front row tickets to one of her concerts...(We'll see how that pans out!)"

Well, ladies and gentlemen: it panned out!!!

 

{Disclaimer: I realize that I may be a bit obsessed, and I realize that some might think I'm too old for this obsession. And I have already been told by a couple siblings that I am "such a teenager" and "such a 12 year old" *cough, cough: Rachel/Josh* HOWEVER, I believe that you need things that keep you feeling young at heart, and this just so happens to be one of those for me!

 

So join me as I reminisce about the night I accomplished my life goal of seeing Taylor Swift front and center!

 

(By the way, I am now altering my life goal to getting backstage passes to Taylor Swift. Seeing how I accomplished the first one so quickly I have high hopes for this one :)

 

I am a member of the Taylor Swift fan club.

And I am not ashamed!

Actually, I'm quite proud of it, and clearly it's working out for me!

 

Due to my membership I was able to buy concert tickets pre-pre-sale. Yes, that is a thing! She was coming to St. Louis for 2 nights and I bought tickets for the first night because how could I wait another night to go?! That was back in December.

 

Fast forward to March. I'm fresh back from my trip to NYC and I open my email on Saturday night. In it is an email from Taylor Connect with 2 codes unique to me to buy pit tickets to one of her STL concerts. {Insert freak out!} I immediately called Kim to make sure it was fine with her. Ryan agreed that it was a great opportunity (those are probably more my words)! He said as long as I could sell my first tickets I should go for it...selling those babies wasn't as easy as it sounds but that's another story! I purchase my pit tickets and jump around the house screaming and shouting!

 

I thought it was too good to be true and figured I'd probably just been scammed. I researched a ton and it looked legit but I was still worried. What if I sold my Monday night seats and showed up Tuesday night to no tickets (the tickets were to be held at will call). I even called Scottrade Center on Monday to make sure my name was on the list. The guy I talked to said they wouldn't get the list until the day of but he looked up TSwift's website and said "That looks legit. I don't think you're getting scammed." Kind of freaking out still!

 

Well, we didn't end up selling our Monday night seats so I had to go twice. Darn! Thankfully I had been smart enough to get the pit tickets for the opposite night of the tickets I already had--just in case! Monday night was great! I had a couple huge freak outs when I watched the people down in the pit and I even hit Joy when they touched Taylor's hand! I came back so excited and ready for Tuesday's concert!

 

Kim and I got to the stadium a little after 5. Joy and I had got shirts the night before (one for Kim too) so we were all decked out in our gear! (And red pants of course, seeing how it's her RED tour)

 

There we are: right up front! Pure amazement!

Umm, yes. I definitely did touch that stage!

On Monday night I saw some girls with light up Christmas lights and thought it was really fun. Joy told me to get a battery pack set from Hobby Lobby. So we had those too!

And here we go:

(You're lucky I trimmed my photos down...I took over 120 that night!)

That is my hand on the left...no zoom action. This is real life, people!

Yup, we're that close!

I love this outfit. And her bangs! Too bad I hate them on me!

At one point she goes to another stage at the back of the stadium for a few songs. Her band stayed up by us. These guys were literally standing right in front of us, and yes, he was smiling just for my picture! Pretty awesome!

Nelly made a cameo. He wasn't there Monday night. They sang 'Hey Porsche' which I love!!!

My favorite song from this album: All too well

Glamour shot!

Loved this outfit!

So every concert she writes something that has meaning to her on one of her arms. Sometimes it's lyrics, sometimes it's a quote. Tuesday it said: "I see your face in every crowd."

It was AMAZING!!! I don't know what else to say! I wish I would have taken more videos because they really bring me back to the moment. I'll have to remember that for next time!

I did watch a video someone else posted on YouTube of her performance with Nelly and you can see me and Kim...so incredible!

 

It was the perfect night!

 

*The deal with pit tickets (this is how lucky we are): For most people they got a couple emails. One to register to be chosen for a code and then the code itself. I never got the registering one. I just had the codes emailed right to me. From what I've read online after purchasing them: Once you receive the email with the code it's first come, first served. You only have 24 hours to do it or your email expires. If you click on a day to purchase the tickets you have 20 minutes to do it or it expires and both your codes are voided. There are only 250 people allowed in the pit (someone that night said it was just 200- 100 on each side). We got extremely lucky!

I think it was a direct blessing from Heavenly Father! :)

TAYLOR SWIFT VIDEOS

It's super late, I'm definitely too tired to be blogging but I'm too excited to go to sleep! I'll add pictures tomorrow but for now here are the videos I took at Taylor Swift in the pit tonight!!! The Stay, Stay Stay one cracks me up because you can hear me singing the whole time and when she walks in front of us I completely lose my mind (and I think I stopped filming!)

(Stay, Stay, Stay didn't load...it's on facebook though!)

Sweet Kiddos!

A month or so ago Jason posted a video on facebook that his team made for Engineering week. The first half is him dancing and the kids really like watching it. Friday morning Colin asked to watch it again and Peyton was sooo excited to see Uncle Jason! (Listen for her laughing in the beginning!!!)

 

(Watch his video here)

 

P.S. He's in town for a couple days and Mom and Dad were out of town this weekend so Jason and Ryan came over for dinner last night. Peyton is in love with Jason! We were sitting next to him on the couch and she just kept looking at him and smiling! She was even patting him. It was the cutest thing ever!

My Little Loves

Oh these kiddos of mine...I love them so much!

Here's a couple stories of things they've been doing and saying recently.

 

Colin:

*We were at Target last weekend and he was helping me load things onto the checkout counter. He was naming the things he was getting out. When he was unloading the yogurt he said: "Peach...strawberry...flower" aka: vanilla!

*A few weeks ago I gave him a diet bar to eat on the way to school. When we got there he pulled his shirt up and asked if he looked skinnier. Then he exclaimed: "Now I have crosses like my uncle!" Crosses= abs! One night we were eating dinner at Mom and Dad's and I told them that story and Colin pointed to Ryan and said "That uncle!"

 

Peyton:

*She said a couple really funny things this weekend but I don't remember what they were. The main thing she's been doing the past few days is walking down the stairs. She used to always go down on her belly but she's quite enjoying walking down! The first night she wanted to hold onto both of my hands when we did it, the next night she only used one hand and the other on the rail.

*She started nursery -for real- last week. She started going in in December when I was called to the Primary Presidency. At that time she was 15 months old and went in no problem. She didn't even turn around to say bye. Just walked right in. That only lasted about 3 weeks. Since then she's freaked out whenever we even walked towards the door. I haven't tried to put her in too much since she wasn't 18 months yet but I did do it a couple times when I had to teach--it never worked out! Last week she started to fuss before we got in there and I stayed for awhile. Once she walked away from me and was preoccupied playing I snuck out. She noticed about 5 minutes later and started bawling. I went back in and stayed with her until they switched rooms for snack and singing time. I told her to hold Garrison's hand while they walked to the classroom and she walked right in, sat down at the table, and didn't bat an eye. At that point I left and she was great the rest of the time!

I was hoping she'd do better the first hour this week but it went pretty much the same! She noticed within 10 seconds of me leaving the room so I went back in a couple minutes later. After that, once she finally left me to go play she checked every minute or 2 to make sure I was still there. I ended up staying again until they switched for snack time. She did great again: held Garrison's hand, walked to the room, sat right down. I didn't have to be in there the rest of the time...apparently food is the way to this girls heart! Hopefully we'll get her to a point where she actually enjoys play time too and doesn't need me in there with her!

Kim playing with her hair tonight after dinner

So cute! And so grown up!!!

We went to Chipotle the other day and she ate pretty much all of the guacamole on her own--as in, licked it right out of the cup!

NYC-Final Post- Going Out in Style!

Oh man, I'm finally on the last NYC post! I still can't believe the trip's already over :(

Our original plan was to get up early on Friday and make the most of our last day. Due to us talking til 3 am that didn't quite happen! The only reason we woke up when we did (10am) was because my phone rang. It's a good thing though or I fear we never would have been ready to leave on time!

We asked the lady at the front desk about some recommendations for lunch. She gave us a couple Italian places which was perfect because we hadn't been to one yet. Before we went to lunch we stopped at a souvenir store to get some last minute presents. I loved it there! The guys were hilarious and kept asking a bunch of questions. The owner was trying to get me to buy some shorts and told me he'd give me a discount. Kim and I ended up getting matching bracelets for ourselves and I asked him if we could have a discount on that since I didn't get the shorts. He was so great--he gave us each discounts and even ended up giving us each and I {heart} NY key chain and his present to us. It was so much fun!

Afterwards we went to Becco for lunch. It's owned by some lady on the Food Network (Lydia Bastianich). It was really good. We each got the sampler so we were given 3 all you can eat pasta dishes. By the time we were done with lunch it was almost time to leave. We walked back to the hotel and the lady told us our car was already there.

Our street (46th and 9th Ave)

Our hotel--it was incredible!

We walked outside the hotel and there was a limo and a Mitsubishi SUV. We thought 'surely that limo's not for us. It must be the SUV.' Well, the SUV said locksmith on it so we figured that wasn't it. We stood there looking at the cars for a minute and I finally decided to knock on the window. The guy opened it and was like "Laguardia?"

The limo was ours!!!

We were so excited! It was the perfect excitement to end our trip because we were getting pretty depressed at that point!

Inside---so excited about our ride!!!

Mike and Garrison picked us up at the airport and Garrison helped take the bags to the car!

Colin modeling his new shirt

Of course he needed to dress officially too!

Peyton with her new shirt! I love it! She likes the sequins on it!

It was the best trip ever! It definitely went by fast but we were able to get most of the things done that we wanted to which was great! We can't wait to go back! Hopefully next time we'll get tickets to Kelly and Michael again since we weren't able to squeeze that in this time.

I'm so grateful to my mom and Ryan for holding down the fort and taking care of the kiddos for me so I could go off on my NYC adventure!!! It was a blast!

NYC Day 3::China Town and 9-11 Memorial

Thursday was the day of little picture taking! It was rainy most of the day and we didn't feel like snapping a bunch of photos! We got really lucky though because they'd been saying it was going to snow every day we were there and the only day it really did was Friday. We were hoping we'd get stranded and have to stay another night but it wasn't in the cards!

We met Kim's friend and headed down to SOHO (via the subway) for lunch. I was the navigator most of this trip and I actually quite enjoyed it! On Wednesday we had asked our waiter about good Mexican restaurants and he suggested Dos Caminos. It was good. SOHO was fun and less crowded then midtown.

We walked to China Town with the intent of buying some purses. We really wanted to go through some tunnels to back rooms! China Town was a lot of fun! Once we got to Canal street it didn't take long for people to approach us about purses. The first two places we went didn't have any tunnels though. The first guy kept running away from us because he'd see a cop walking or driving down the street. He was a hoot. I didn't find anything I wanted either of those places so we decided we needed to go somewhere else.

I said we needed to get further down on Canal street to get a legitimate tunnel experience. Once all the writing was in Chinese we found a lady who told us to come with her. She walked 5 feet in front of us at all times and never turned around to make sure we were following her. She had us winding through China Town like nobodies business. I'm pretty sure it was a 10 minute walk! Once again there was a cop walking behind us so she pretty much just left us standing on the street until we were able to go in the building. The lady who ushered us in was like "Hurry, hurry. Fast, fast." She even told Liz she was going too slow and needed to hurry up. We walked through a small tunnel into a back room. I got 2 bags there. It was such a fun experience! We also thought it was pretty funny that they gave us our purses in black trash bags--because that doesn't look conspicuous walking down the street!

After we got our bags we went to this ice cream shop Kim's sister had told her about. It was really good. Ally had recommended the black sesame seed flavor. It was surprisingly good. It kind of tasted like chocolate, then peanut butter, then cookies and cream. I ended up getting almond cookie which I thought was amazing! There wasn't anywhere to sit in the shop so we went outside but it was raining and standing in the rain in 35 degrees eating ice cream doesn't seem like a very smart plan! We started walking towards the 9-11 Memorial and passed a coffee shop and decided to go inside. The lady yelled at us and told us we couldn't eat our ice cream in there unless we ordered something. Kim said she'd get some hot chocolate and the lady said we all needed to get something so we all ended up with hot chocolate.

After we'd warmed up a bit we went to the 9-11 Memorial. It was interesting to see. The museum isn't finished yet so we just saw the pools. I really liked how the names were cut into the metal and there was light shining through them. I thought it was a nice touch. By the time we'd finished up there we were ready to find a bathroom and head back uptown. Liz had to leave and Kim and I got a hot dog and went to McDonald's to rest our feet for a bit.

We met my friend from college up in Harlem that night for dinner. She suggested Ruth Ann's which is soul food. We got fried chicken with honey and macaroni and cheese. Briana had chicken and waffles which I've never had before so I had a bite. By the time we were finished with dinner we were pretty tired so we went back to the hotel. The plan was to go to bed early that night but we ended up staying up til 3 am talking. It was such a fun day!

Oh yeah, check out our trash bags!

By this time the rain had washed all my makeup off and turned my hair curly! Fun times!