Introducing...

Taejen Brett Warby!!! He's my best friend's new baby boy. He was born Tuesday, December 1st and we all love him already!

The boys and I were able to spend a lot of time with Taejen's two big sisters the last three days. We love having such good friends.

Cleod is 5!!

My biggest boy is five! It seems really strange to have a school-aged child, even though he's not in Kindergarten yet.

Friday was Cleod's birthday and we had good day. For lunch we went to my friend Savannah's house. Her little girl has the same birthday as Cleod and so we had a combined party and had Chette and her girls over. We worked with Savannah in the good old days at Papa Murphy's where Chette and I worked during college.

We had pizza and cupcakes and presents before heading to Funtime Inflatables, a new bouncy house place here in town.

The kids, well most of the kids, really enjoyed playing on the bouncy houses and slides. Cleod was scared the first time down the big slide but got over that really fast. Chette's two year old was ALL over the place...she loved it!

Ryan didn't jump at all. I told him that he owes me $5 now. He just wandered around and pretended to play the arcade games. Grant wandered around too and walked up to stranges. He wanted everyone but Mom, which is funny for a minute but made it a little stressful because he would have let someone take him home and not put up much of a fuss for a while. It's great that he's friendly, but I am already paranoid about my kids getting kidnapped.

We saw our friend Jill who's in town from Vegas because she's having her baby here. She's due next week and we are all getting anxious for her little girl to arrive.

Friday night, Silas and I took Cleod out to eat, just the three of us. It was so quiet and relaxing. The waiters sang to him which was really fun and he had a good time being alone with Mom and Dad. My mom came up from Vegas for the weekend so she watched Ryan and Grant. Question: Why are my kids always better for other people? Really, I'm grateful...but what is that about?

Last night we had Cleod's birtday dinner. In my house growing up we got to pick the meal for the Sunday before or after our birthday and we decided to start that too. Cleod picked spaghetti and I didn't argue! After dinner we had CAKE and not just an ordinary cake...an awesome Phineas cake made by his Aunt Joy! The Disney show, Phineas and Ferb is a family favorite and Cleod LOVED the cake. It was great.

We had a super busy weekend. On top of all the birthday festivities, Cleod had a practice Saturday morning for his Primary Program. Every year the children from 3-12 years old present to the congregation the things they learned at church through the year. Sunday was the actual program and it was great. Cleod got a little spacey for a while but he was brave and said his part and sang most of the songs great.

Saturday afternoon was our Relief Society Super Saturday, an activity where a bunch of woman do a bunch of crafts for a bunch of hours. It was awesome. I have a nice husband who stayed home with the kids. My mom and I painted like mad and I helped a few ladies make washer necklaces. I got the idea from my sister-in-law Kizzie and got the letter stamps when I was visiting another sister-in-law, Selissa, over Labor Day Weekend.

Overall, it was a crazy, stressful, fun weekend. I am so grateful to be a mom and I am really grateful to have such a wonderful family.

72-hour kit...Clothing

So I last Wednesday, I blogged about Step 1 from Utah's Plan 9 program which helps families to be prepared for public health emergencies and disasters.

Today I skipped Step 2, which is the food part of the 72-hour kit. I need to go to the store and get just a few things for that.

Step 3 is clothing. I had some things already but some were too small and it wasn't complete. SO today I got one of each of these items for all five of us: Jeans, shirt, sweater, socks, shoes, underwear (extra diapers and wipes for Grant). For the boys, the clothes are all the next size up. I save everything so for Grant and Ryan they have holey jeans that I save for camping. For Cleod, his clothes are stuff I have gotten on sale or at DI for future use. It only took about 30 minutes and I got to check another step off my list. Two down, seven to go!

BE PREPARED!

So today I felt like doing some Emergency Preparedness. First, I needed to restock the car with spare clothing for the boys. I got some holey jeans, cheap flag shirts, underwear for the big boys and a bunch of diapers and wipes for Grant, and some sweaters. Yes, they all match but that wasn't really on purpose. They just never wear these sweaters that I got cheap at Old Navy so I figured it would be good to throw them in the car. Also in the car we have a good first aid kit, jumper cables, a pack of water bottles, a blanket, toilet paper, extra utensils (which I thought was silly but I have actually used them), an emergency radio/hand-crank flashlight, and some cash.

The other day I was at the health department and there were some PLAN 9 pamphlets that I looked through. I have looked at A LOT of emergency preparedness information and this was very clean and clear. The first step is having one gallon of water person in your emergency kit. I have lots of water in my storage room, but not with the 72-hour kits stuff, so today (wish help from Cleod) I put 40, 1/2 Liter water bottles in a small suitcase with wheels. (That way it will be easier to transport if needed.) One gallon is like 3.78 Liters so we need 8 water bottles each.

I also organized my coat closet which is really our 72-hour kit closet which happens to store our coats. It's kind of hard to see, but there is a big black suitcase on the right which has clothing, toiletries, candles, propane, rope and more. (I am going to reorganize that soon.) On the left is the water suitcase and the light blue bag in front of that on the floor is the food part of the 72-hr kit which is incomplete at the moment. I took a bunch of stuff from it when we went to Colorado in September. On the shelf there are two backpacks with flashlights, batteries, an emergency radio, ponchos, crayons & paper, card games, wool socks and hand warmers.

I have been working on this for a long time and it is always on my mind. I feel relieved to have the first step from the Plan 9 pamphlet done. It was especially fun today because Cleod helped me the whole time. He's such a champ!

Ryan's late birthday present

I forgot about this and want to share it, mostly for Silas's mom. She sent something for Ryan along with Grant's birthday present and he had the best reaction!!

Thanks, Grandma Aitchison!!

Happy Halloween!

I hope everyone had a great Halloween. Can you believe it's November??

We had a really fun day! We spent some of the afternoon with our bestest friends, Brett and Deruchette and went to their ward's Trunk or Treat. The kids got TONS of candy and Cleod liked seeing all the other kids' costumes.

Deruchette is almost 8 months prego and dressed up her belly! SO cute!

Here are the two crazies...Ryan (Monkey) and Leksi (Raja the Tiger). I have a theory about second children, but that's another story.

Cleod and Kianna. Our cute big kids dressed up like Bumblebee from Transformers and Jasmine.

We went over the Brett's mom and dad's house because they are basically our adopted family. Brett's mom always gets things for our boys when see buys toys or whatever for her grandkids. They all got glow sticks from "Nana" this year. She's the best.

After that we went and picked up my neice Brooklyn and went trick or treating with her and my cousin Christine and her kids. It was fun to walk door to door in a nice neighborhood but got COLD. Then we headed over to my uncle and aunt's house to watch movies! It was so fun to spend time with family. I'm so glad we have relatives and good friends so close!

Grant's ONE!!

My baby is one. Crazy, I know. It's been a weird weekend. We had a party planned for Saturday but Ryan got sick on Thursday so we cancelled it, just to be safe. I haven't been feeling very well today but we had a mini-party with Joy, Brooklyn and Brett, Deruchette and the girls.

Grant wasn't really into the present thing but he got excited about the present he got from Grandma and Grandpa Aitchison and Keenan.

Here he is with Brett and Cleod.

He loves his toy...and his tongue.

Cake aftermath...

Joy and Brooklyn got him a cool leap frog puppy that says his name. It's cute but he hasn't played with it yet. It got kidnapped and I think it's in the basement. He got some Lego duplos from Grandma and Grandpa Rowley which the kids all played with for a while, but I didn't get a photo. Grant loves them.

This was a few weeks ago, but I had to share it. Silas and I think our boys are pretty awesome.