Ugly Sweater and Karaoke Party!

I have always wanted to go to an ugly sweater party and this year our friends had one. We borrowed Marion's (my mother in law) Christmas sweaters that she seriously used to wear, although, thankfully, not anytime recently! She also let me use some of her 'serious' Christmas earrings! These things were huge and they looked super crafty!
We also sang karaoke and had a blast! Once I got warmed up, I thought I would never leave the Todd's house! In this picture the guys are really getting their groove on! Believe me, they had some awesome moves and who knew they could sing so well to Britney Spears? We ate, exchanged some quality White Elephant gifts, and have one great night! Thanks everyone and let me know who is doing karaoke... I am SO there!

Tag is 4! and other festivities!

Yesterday my little guy turned four! He has been looking forward to this for quite some time and we were happy when they day finally arrived. We didn't do a whole lot on his actual birthday, since it was on Sunday, but I felt like we celebrated it for over a week!
First of all, last weekend we went up north to spend some time with my family. We celebrated Christmas with Jason and Claudia and their kids, since we won't see them on Christmas. We went to see some Christmas lights with the kids and here they are all bundeled up. We are not used to the cold, so this was our first time breaking out the winter gear.

We celebrated all of the December birthdays while we were up there, Mine, Tag's, Grandma's, and Boston's.

It was fun to celebrate them all together and Tag was sooo excited with all his presents. We made a cake and split it into four spots for everyone to have their own little cake.


Then this weekend his Grammy and Grandpy came down from Salt Lake and celebrated with us. On Saturday we started the day off with Jumpin Jacks, which is one of Tag's favorite places. Then we had lunch at Del Taco, another of his favorite spots. Then we opened presents and had cake. Then finished the day off with a movie. He has such fun day and was so funny opening his presents. He was so excited opening each gift and he was just 'OOOh and aaaah' and kept saying, "are you kidding me?" It was hilarious!
He wanted a Batman cake, so that is what he got. He only eats the frosting (sounds like me huh?) and he loved blowing out his candles.
He finally got his car/dinasour which he has been asking for for a few months. He was so happy with his playdough, paint set, dragon/car set, gun, new clothes, and especially his new flight coat which his granpy bought for him. Thanks so much everyone for the gifts!
I can't believe he is four! He is such a big boy and has gotten to be so much fun! We love you Mr. T and are excited for many more birthdays!!

Family Pictures

My awesome friend, Dion, is sooo talented. She just recently started photography as a hobby, but she is getting so good and has just started her little business. My kids were not very cooperative and we still got some great shots! What do you think? You can visit her website (she is under my friends and family) to see her work. She is great and I can't thank her enough! I know she is getting pretty booked, so hurry up!

Funny Things!

I have been writing down some of the funny things that Tag has been saying and doing lately. Here it goes:

I asked Taggart to help Maddie clean up the blocks and he said, "That's not my problem, that sis's problem." He did have a point there, since he wasn't even the one playing with them.

He loves the color green, as you can see by the picture. Green blocks and green shirt? Everything he does revolves around the color green!

He is obsessed with the word 'actually' and uses it ALL the time. Sometimes every other or few words; it is a little out of control, actually!!

We were getting ready for our family pictures to be taken and he walked over to the mirror and said, "I'm so handsome.." while he sat and stared at himself in the mirror.

Maddie was crying in her room before she fell asleep and Tag yelled to me (I was in the other room) "Mom! Go sing her a song... I'm serious!" Okay, now look who is the parent!

One day he said to me, "Mom, next day sis is going to grow up into a big boy!" I then went on to tell him that she was going to be a big GIRL. He said, "Mom, listen to me... Next day when sis eats her lunch she is going to be a big boy!" I kept reminding him that she was a girl not a boy, but he just kept saying "Listen to me.." Obviously he was meaning something that I wasn't quite understanding!

Lately when he gets in trouble and gets sent to time out, he says before he can even get into his room, "I want to make the right choice!!" I am like, well sorry buddy.. you already made the wrong one!!

When we are driving in the car and he sees a stop sign or sign with a 'T' in it, he says, "Look Mom, 'T' for Taggart!" And believe me, there are a lot of stop signs and I never seem to get tired of hearing his cute voice say this with such excitement!

He also has been very particular with what he wears. I have been lucky up until now, with dressing him in whatever cute clothes I wanted.. it was soooo great, but those days are over! He is obsessed with these brown sweatpants (luckily they are pretty cute sweatpants, not the ones with elastic on the ankles, I would die!!) He wants to wear them every day and often digs them out of his hamper and tries to wear them dirty. He also always wants to wear his green dinasour shirt or a couple other shirts that are not really my favorites! He also does NOT want to wear two shirts (like a t-shirt with a long-sleeved under it, or long sleeved shirt under a hoodie) and he freaks out and yells, "I can't want to wear two shirts!!" But the worst is the last couple of weeks for church. He hates his church shirts and refuses to wear his tie, or a vest over a button up shirt- again back to the 2-shirt thing! He has thrown a fit the last couple of weeks and then goes to church so upset that he sleeps through sacrament meeting! Any tips that you have are welcome, but I don't really think they make dinasour shirts for church!! I guess Taggart has finally discovered his independence, and I don't like it one bit!!

Busy Halloween Week

We had one crazy, busy Halloween Week! On Monday night for Family Night, we went to the pumpkin patch. The kids had a lot of fun riding on the train ride and sliding down the slide. They also had fun looking at the animals. Both Maddie and Tag were trying to feed this little pony. We went to the pumpkin patch and picked out a pumpkin, but my camera ran out of batteries so we only got a couple pictures.

On Thursday Tag had his Halloween Party at his Preschool. He refused to wear his costume so I just sent it in his back pack thinking that he would eventually want to wear it, but nope, he just went around wearing a normal shirt. Luckily it was a football shirt and people thought he was dressed as a football player! Good job for picking out that shirt, Tag!! He had fun trunk or treating and decorating his pumpkin.
During the day of Halloween I took the kids to a party they were having at the Gym Daycare. While I learned the dance to 'Thriller' in the hip-hop cardio class, they partied it up in the daycare and came home again with loads of candy! Again, Tag refused to wear his costume, so they are just in their Halloween outfits. At this point I was wondering if he would even wear his costume at night??
We pretty much had to force his costume on and this is the first smile he made after he had eaten several pieces of candy! I don't know what his deal was?? He was been obsessed with dressing up for weeks and now when it comes down to it, he doesn't even want to?? Whatever??
Maddie, on the other hand, loved her costume and has even worn it a couple of times that last couple days. Isn't she the cutest butterly you have ever seen?
Here are Cam and Maddie walking around the Trunk or Treat. My kids both loved walking from car to car and really thought it was extra special to actually put the candy in their bag; it was too cute!
I was a gypsy woman and Cam was a dancing ape. He looked hilarious!!
On Saturday morning I ran the Butch Cassidy 10K in Springdale. I finished the race in 52:48 which is a 8:29 min/mile. I was really pretty happy with this considering I had never run this far and I thought it was a decent pace. Here are a few people I ran with. It was beautiful to run with all the fall colors on the mountains, but at times I wasn't really looking at the scenery, just trying to finish the race!! Good Job girls!! WE did it!
On Saturday evening, the Stucki's had a Murder Mystery Dinner. It was fun to dress up and act out the play. We dressed up as Italian people and don't you just love Cam's mustache? I made him promise me that he would never, ever grow a real one!! YUCK!! We had a fun time figuring out who the murderer was and we ate some great pasta and bread! Thanks to the Stucki's for a fun night!
Overall it was a fun week and now we just have a TON of candy that me and my kids can't seem to stop eating!! Good thing I at least ran the race to burn off some of those Halloween treats!

Michler's Cabin

We had such a fun weekend! The Michler's invited us up to their cabin in Kolob with a few other families. We played games, ate some good food, chilled by the fire and didn't get a whole lot of sleep, but it was worth it!Brooke, Me, and Brittany. We are sitting on the fence that runs behind the cabin and below it is a huge cliff! It had an incredible view and when we opened the drapes in the morning and looked outside, Tag yelled, "That's amazing!!!" It was so funny, but it was truley an amazing view.
Here is Cam teaching Tag to shoot. Don't worry.. it is only a pellet gun!!
Here are a few of the kids sitting on a bench outside. We had a fire going the entire time we where there and we all enjoyed watching it, plus it smelled so good too. Then when we got home of course everything smelled like the fire and it doesn't smell too good when you are not in the mountains for some reason! Needless to say, I have been doing laundry all day!
The kids could not get enough of playing on these stairs!!
We brought up a couple of Rhinos and did some cruising around (Thanks Palmers!!) My kids could have driven around all day long in that thing! We drove it down by the lake and spent a lot of time throwing rocks and just hanging out.
Me, Tawni, and Tricia. Thanks again to Ryan and Tricia for the great time!!! It was so fun to get away from cell phones and the television; the cabin didn't have heat or electricity, but we stayed warm by the fire. We had a great time and hope to do it again, maybe next time without Maddie who decided that she didn't want to sleep very well!! Thanks to everyone who came!

Ayotte Family Weekend

Well,as you can see, I finally did it! Cam has been begging me forever to dye my hair dark and I finally got the guts to do it. It is darker than my natural color, but I would never have my natural color since it is ugly, mousy brown! I like it, but I am not sure I am convinced to stay this way forever and never go blond again.. we will just have to see, but it is a fun change!
Me and my sister, Kim. People thought we looked alike before, what do you think now?? This weekend when my family was here, they kept getting me and my sisters mixed up.
While my whole family was here we decided to get a family picture since we all weren't going to be together for awhile. My kids were horrible! Tag didn't want to wear the shirt he was supposed to and had a major meltdown, and Maddie just wouldn't sit still. This is probably the best shot, but at least we have a current picture of all of us.
Here I am with my sisters, mom, and sister in laws. It is so nice taking a picture without children and we are all pretty good at posing.. LOL!!
We had a great time with the whole family here. Jason and Claudia drove from California and the rest came down from up North. Tag had so much fun playing with Ada; he would wake up every morning and say, "I want to see Ada." We had a great time just hanging out and enjoying the beautiful weekend here in St. George. Thanks everyone for coming down. It is always so great to get everyone together!!

Girl's Weekend!

This past weekend I spent some time alone with some of my best friends!! We went to a conference in Las Vegas called 'Time Out For Women'. Deseret Book puts it on and we went two years ago. It was awesome again this year. Hillary Weeks was the musical presenter and I love her. It was an amazing conference and really gave us all a lot to think about and gave us some serious inspiration. We spent most of the day on Saturday at the conference and pretty much the rest of the time we spent shopping. We pretty much shopped until we dropped and ran out of money to spend!

Here we are at Sephora trying on makeup. How do we look?

We found these crazy sunglasses and I just couldn't resist taking a picture! Don't these just bring you back to the eighties? We had such a great time! We hardly got any sleep because we couldn't stop talking! It was fun to have sleep overs and just be GIRLS! Thanks so much to my awesome girlfriends for a much needed TIME OUT weekend! Let's do it again soon. And thanks to my hubby for watching the kids! He said it was pretty easy so I think that I will be doing it again soon! Who else is in??

Not Much Going On....

There hasn't really been too much going on around our house except for the normal and it has been nice to actually just be hanging out! I thought I would post a couple things about what my kids have been up to. Maddie has now caught onto Tag flexing his muscles and she likes to show us how strong she is. It was so funny! One day Taggart was eating with his friend Wesley and I told them they needed to finish so they would get strong and they proceeded to flex their muscles. I looked over at Maddie in her high chair and she was flexing away! It is crazy what she picks up on!And here is Taggart showing how super strong he is!!
My kids are still getting into everything.. especially Maddie, but here are a couple of pictures where they got into my cupboards and helped themselves to some sprinkles and chocolate milk mix. I have a jar on my counter with mix in it for chocolate milk and Tag loves to sneak up there and eat it plain, without the milk. He apparently helped Maddie on top of the counter and she fell in love too!
Hey Maddie, how about some milk with that chocolate?? She does look a little drunk.. maybe it is all the chocolate!
Maddie and Tag have discovered where my tampons are and now they are their new favortie toy!! Seriously, every day (I am not kidding!) Maddie gets into my cupboard and pulls out a tampon and opens it up. She likes to yell into them like they are a party favor or something and Tag of course, thinks they are a rocket and gets frustrated when it won't go back in. I have to explain that they aren't really made for that and try to avoid explaining what they are really for to my three year old!
Anyway, so we are good and I am sorry that I have been slacking in the blogging department. I will try to keep the posts coming!

Lake Powell without Kids... HOLLA!

We spent a couple days last weekend on our friends' houseboat at Lake Powell. The best part of the whole trip was that we left our kids home!!! It was so nice to be able to hang out on the boat and not have to worry about kids and if they were drowning. We went with three other couples and had a blast. We felt like we were in College again; like we were just hanging out without a care in the world! Oh, the good old days! We ate a lot of junk food, played some games, and talked a lot. I don't think we shut up the entire trip! We did some tubing and wake boarding and swam a lot. We even did some cliff jumping which was a lot of fun. At night it was so nice to just sit on top of the house boat and talk while we looked at the stars. Brooke and Tyler even saw the Milky Way for the first time! I know... what?? They are city folk, I guess. We had a great time and a big thanks to the Vanderhorst's for their hospitality and an even bigger thanks to Ricki for watching my kiddos!!! You are awesome and now I owe you one! Here's to good times and good friends!!

Tag's First Day of Preschool

Today was Taggart's first day of Preschool. The other day when he saw all the kids going to school, he cried and said he wanted to go to 'cool' as he calls it. Last night he said to me, "I can't want to go to cool, I'm nervous." I just kept wondering if he even knew what nervous meant. This morning he was excited and a little scared. He wasn't too excited for us to leave him alone, but he did great after we left. He wanted to stand this way in the picture so we could see his T-Rex backpack. I wanted to tell him that he wasn't getting frisked, I just needed a picture!!

He was so excited to see me when I picked him up and told me all about preschool and I pretty much didn't understand what he was trying to tell me since he was so excited!! Here he is showing me his papers from school. He insisted on wearing his shirt that his friend (our neighbor) Wesley gave to him yesterday. He wore it yesterday afternoon also and it was a little dirty! So much for new school clothes!!!

He was excited to see his 'Sis' too. Here he is giving her a hug, although it may be a headlock... I'm not sure! I am so excited to have him in Preschool and to be able to just have some time alone with Maddie. Good Job Mr. T on your first day of Preschool; you're such a big boy!!