New Moon

Wednesday while we were in Chillicothe we went to see New Moon with Morgan's parents while his siblings watched the boys. I enjoyed the movie. Victoria was in the movie more than she was in the book, but they had to show off the awesome wolves and their special effects. Visually this movie was great, no cheesy sparkles accompanied by even cheesier music. The thing that bothered me the most, and is an extension from the first movie, is that you don't really see Bella and Edward being happy together. They are always so serious and not-smiling. I am a firm believer that if you are in love you should be happy and smiling. There was one scene where she was holding back a smile at seeing him. I think, come on, you love him more than anything, is it really going to kill you to let the world (and him) see you smiling when you see him?

So that's my beef with the movie. BUT, even though the movies aren't masterpieces (though this one was 50x better than the last one) I love the story and the movie tries to follow the books, and does a good enough job that I enjoy the movies.

It is kind of like Harry Potter, although I get more frustrated with the Harry Potter movies because they have a much larger budget, but when people try to visually show you something you only imagined you have to say, thanks for the effort. I know it wasn't perfect, but thanks for trying.

Two Movies

Eli and I were blowing bubbles, and he wasn't quite doing it right. So I used my hand to help him get his mouth in the right formation. Here is a funny video of him trying to do the same thing.





This is a movie of Eli and Josh eating leftover chocolate off wax paper. The funny thing is, Josh wasn't actually getting chocolate, just going through the motion. Later we asked Josh to fin different body parts...nose, tongue, head, and hair.

Busy Week

I made homemade chocolates. My mom got me started but this week I dipped them!

My beautiful melting chocolate.

Eli and Josh, eating the leftover chocolate on the wax paper.

Josh got a big surprise. Saturday we took our first long trip since turning his seat around and all of the sudden he saw that he had been missing out on movies. He was enthralled!

Here is Josh playing with one of his favorite presents from Grandma Lasley!
He'll go play with it all the time.

We saw a hawk just sitting out in our backyard!

Eli talked me into letting him have a candy necklace.

Here he is enjoying it.

The boys wanted to get out the baby play mat.

and they were fighting over who got to touch it.

Disaster

Last night Morgan went downstairs and happened to look in one of our giant tupperware box-things to look for something. These were really big containers, probably four feet by 2 feet. What he found was a disaster. The bottom of the container had holes in it and had sucked up water from when our basement flooded 6 months ago. Tons of the books and who knows what else was all moldy and had to be thrown out.
I lost a bunch of craft things I had done, high school & college papers, some books we had stored there. Some of the worst things that had to be thrown out were some of my high school year books. My sophmore and junior year books were okay. But the thing that probably tore my heart the most were my Grandma's cookbooks. Before my Grandma died my mom gathered all of her recipe's and those of her children and compiled them all into a big cookbook. I had gotten 4 extras to be able to give to my children and when Morgan pulled them out of the box they were just covered in mildew and mold. Luckily 2 of them are okay so I've still got some.

Overall I think I'm doing okay. I knew I had to throw the things out...you can't keep moldy things, its bad mojo. Also Morgan cleaned it out so I didn't have to see each thing that I was loosing.
Crazy, crazy.

Eli's Stories

Eli is a funny boy, very imaginative. This is what he told me today during snack time.

Eli: Mom, watch. "Mamma Mia." Mom, when I get older I'm going to get a new house after I get my guitars. And I'm going to ask my wife if I can watch the Mamma Mia movie and she'll say Yes you can watch while I make dinner.
Then I'll put the movie into the TV and I'll push the right button. And the movie will say Mamma Mia, and then I'll say Mamma Mia too!
Mom, does Jamie have the Mamma Mia movie?

Me: Yes, I think she does.

Eli: Oh. Mom, is Jamie my wife?

Me: No, Jamie's not your wife, she's your friend.

Eli: Well, then who's my wife?

Me: You don't have one yet, you have to go on a mission first.

Eli: Oh. Okay.


For the record, Eli has heard the Mamma Mia music less than 10 times, has only seen the movie once or twice but apparently it has made an impression on him. Jamie does have the movie, and her two girls (Eli's friends) both love it, so I guess it has worn off on him too.

I love to Exercise!

If you would have asked me even 6 months ago if I would ever write that I love to exercise I would have told you that you were crazy. I am Melissa, the least exercising person I know. I hate that exercising makes me all out of breath, sweaty and worst of all red in the face.

Now I don't mind getting out of breath or sweaty (after all that means what I am doing is working) as for being red in the face, I just don't look in the mirror and Eli and Josh never say anything about it.

The reason that I love to exercise now, is that I am seeing results! HORRAY! I haven't lost too much since I started really exercising every day, but today I got to a new low (I'm not telling you, I'm not that brave yet.) I think the last time I was at this weight was while I was nursing Eli and had to have no icecream, cheese, milk, happiness, etc. Once I got back on dairy I gained a bit of weight.

Anyway, the funny thing is that I recently purchased an exercise video after trying it out from the library. Its called Walk Away the Pounds. I would have described it as a video my mom would use, a bunch of ladies in matching colored shirts walking, doing knee lifts, etc. EXCEPT when my mom came to visit she brought her video which is some crazy Turbo Jam, hip-hop dance/kick thing that I couldn't keep up with for the life of me. So my video is what one might consider old lady-ish (mom, you're not an old lady!) while my mom's video is hip-hop cool. Go figure.

An Extra Long Vacation Post

I was very lucky to have my Mom, sister Cheyenne, and niece Hallie come visit us this last week.
We had a great time. My mom brought caramel and chocolate to teach me how to make Turtles and Bavarian Mints. I'm not quite done with the mints yet, maybe I'll finish them Saturday when Morgan can take the boys! :)

She also brought some of the papers she had saved from when I was in school, it was fun to read the things I had written, especially some of the class journals...every SINGLE entry had some mention of breakfast, and/or food. We were laughing so hard we were crying a I read them.

Here are some pictures of our week with little descriptions of them.

Joshua using Cheyenne's baby monitor as a phone.

My mom showing Eli her scriptures on her phone-thingy.

She had games on it too, and all the kids had to get in on the action. After scriptures each night we would let Eli play a little game on Grandma's cool toy.

Morgan asked Eli if he could use his (Eli's) blanket. Eli said, no, and then he ran into our bedroom, pulled the blanket off our bed and brought it to Morgan. I see him coming into the living room with the blanket and am about to get after him when I remember the conversation that E had just had with Morgan and I couldn't help but laugh.

Here's Eli's "Friends" Hallie and Cheyenne.

Grandma and the new blanket she made for Josh.

Eli playing with Grandma.

Their tickling each other.

Playing at the park.

Josh and Grandma

Sharing the shovels

Josh getting ready to go down the slide.

Down the slide

More digging

Eli swinging

Josh swinging

Eli and Hallie

Looking down at the water.

So cute!

I made a Key Lime Pie. yeah baby!
(Although next time I would double the filling, and half the meringue.)

Josh getting into the cupboards...literally.

Eli and Grandma

Cute cousins

Me and my mom

Josh and Grandma

THANKS FOR COMING MOM!

Crazy Eli

So my Mom, sister and niece just left from a week of vacation, and I'll have more posts about the fun we had, but this just happened so I had to post about it.

My mom calls, they are almost to Council Bluffs/Omaha and she wanted me to check online for a quilt store that she can stop at. Eli immediately starts asking to talk on the phone. These are the different things that he was "growling" at me (He wasn't quite yelling, but he was asking in his mean/serious voice.)


"You're killing me here."

"Its just five bucks."

"Just drive around the block."

He kept saying these things over and over at me. The last two quotes are sort of from the Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus book. I had to tell him he wasn't a pigeon and to go sit down on the chair.

Crazy Eli.

Eli's Fun

Eli got these glasses for Halloween and LOVES them. We've lost them three times and he was frantic until they were found again. Here he is being the Mad Scientist helping me make bread.

It is so cute when you just find your kids playing quietly by themselves.



We bought Eli a helmet since we go riding around our neighborhood. He really likes it and is great at wearing it.

The helmet came with knee pads which Eli also wants to wear. Here he is ready to go.

Riding around the neighborhood.

Trick or Treating

We had a good time trick-or-treating around our neighborhood. The boys did great, we kept Josh in his stroller until the very end then he wanted to climb up the stairs to trick-or-treat just like Eli.

Here's Eli the Lion

Josh Lion in the stroller.

Morgan was the stroller-pusher and I got to go to the doors with Eli.

Finally, here is Josh enjoying some of that candy!