boy or girl?

time to take your guess! we'll open the gift tomorrow on Christmas Day, so time is running short to make a guess....

clarification...

Sorry if I seemed to confuse anyone with my last post. Here's the story:

With our first two we did not find out the gender before they announced it upon their arrival. This seems to drive most of our family and friends crazy! (Sorry... but it is really fun to be surprised like that! You should try it some time.)

For this child, we were thinking of doing the same thing, but decided since our 20 week ultrasound was so close to Christmas, we would find out on Christmas. So we had the ultrasound technician write it on some paper and seal it in an envelope. This envelope now sits under our tree in a pretty little package and is waiting for us to open it on Christmas, where our child will announce the gender. This way it will be just our little family, all together, and not in some cold room where I am awkwardly lying on a table and some complete stranger tells us the good news...

So that's what's going on in our little world... this is our compromise to all our loved ones who so desperately want to know if we have a little boy or a little girl for them to love.

Now, don't sneak in and find the gift and open it before we do.

That would hurt my feelings.

It's a..... healthy......baby......

EITHER A BOY OR A GIRL!!!!!!!!!!!!

We're not actually sure yet.
(Our choice.... not the jelly bean's modesty.)

I know. I know. Why do we torture our dear family and friends in this way? Because we love you that's all. And it's fun to not find out until the great arrival. (Wasn't Sam's and Livia's births way more exciting since we didn't know their genders beforehand!)

But....

we decided to be different this time. And we will find out long before April if the little bean is a boy bean or a girl bean.... are you surprised? Yeah, we are too.

It will be our best Christmas present to open this year. A sweet surprise from our choice little spirit that will soon join our family and take over our house.

So, yes, we will find out the gender in a couple of weeks. Unless of course we change our minds by then. You never know with us.

spooky boos 2010

What's Halloween without carving pumpkins? The kids had a blast... probably because we ended up gutting the pumpkins for them yet again. (Maybe next year....)


This year we carved them with some of our friends, Ronnie and Brittany Richey.




Every year at Jason's work, they go all out for Halloween. Every where is decorated with different themes and the kids get to go trick-or-treating through the decorations. This year was no different! Jason was in charge of his department and put in a ton of work and was very much Halloweened out by the time Halloween actually came! (I'm so proud of him!) His group did Battleship (the game) and they all dressed up as sailors. Do you like the big fat tat on his neck?


Here is inside Jason's area. They created a submarine and had nerf guns and were attacking each other. It was hard to get a good picture since it was so dark in there and the area was big. But it looked really cool!

In another area they had Duck Hunt. And yes, that is real sod. (fake dogs and ducks though) The music to the old Nintendo Duck Hunt was playing and the kids could pretend to shoot the ducks.


I didn't take as many pictures as I should have but here are some of the other areas different teams had: Monopoly, Mouse Trap, Nintendo, Avatar, cereal, Haunted Forest, Ice Land, Shrek, and plenty more that are not coming to mind.


The kids (and I'll admit, me too) were pretty excited to try out some cotton candy. Man, that stuff is still so good!


Grandma and Grandpa Cook joined in with us and the kids loved having them there to help find the good candy and carry their buckets and to just have someone to spoil them rotten!



There were lots of people doing fun things for the kids like balloon shapes and juggling tricks.



Livia basically had her next candy in hand as she ate the current one. The whole time we were there. Talk about a serious sugar high!! She was so hyper by the time we got home. Needless to say, they both went to bed with a kids pepto tablet in their tummies.

Sam was so excited to be Superman! And Livia... well she refused to put any costumes on. I told her if she wanted candy she needed to put one on. I figured Cinderella was the least costumey. (Yes, I know, she wore it last year too.)



With all the candy Liv ate, she had lots of candy dribble on her dress. I soaked it and realized it probably wouldn't be ready for her to wear again for trick-or-treating on Saturday, so she had to pick another costume. (She had like 5 or 6 to choose from.)

She picked the kangaroo. Here are the kids ready to go out trick-or-treating again:


We promised them right after dinner we would go. We opened the garage and that was when the crazy storm started. After waiting about 10 minutes with the rain just pouring down and the hail making the roofs look like winter wonderland, we decided it was letting up enough to go and get it done with. I'm not kidding... as soon as we got home the rain stopped. Grrr. Well, at least the kids were ok with not staying out too long since they were so cold!


We had lots of fun... and got (and still have) lots of candy! Happy Halloween!!

sister visits

I feel like I don't get to see my sisters too much these days. The oldest, Ronda, only lives just over an hour away, yet we don't get many opportunities to get together. The next one, Leesa, moved to New Mexico last year. And the third, Jill, has been in Nebraska for a while now.

In July we all ended up in North Dakota visiting my parents for an incredibly awesome weekend.

But recently I've been lucky to see all my sisters again!

Nebraska:
In September the kids and I flew to Nebraska. I actually didn't get too much sister time then because a few hours after I arrived Jill left for a week to go on a 10 year anniversary cruise. (Lucky!) I got to play single mom of 5 for the week. It was awesome to have that time with my niece and nephews that I rarely get to see. (Extremely exhausting.... but mostly awesome!)

We flew directly into Kearney, on a tiny little plane. Tiny enough that the co-pilot was the one giving the spiel on the seat belts and oxygen masks. Then he was nice enough to let Sam get a good look at all those buttons and gauges.


Sam and Preston had a blast playing and playing and playing and... well, you get the point.

Jill and me.
Do we look like sisters?

I did get a day and a half of sister time before we flew back home to Utah, so that was nice.


New Mexico:
This past Thursday, Ronda and I and all our kids went on a little road trip to New Mexico to visit Leesa and her family. Let me tell you, driving 8 hours goes by really fast when you talk the whole time! And the drive back on Sunday went even faster!! (Jason has no idea how we do the talking-the-whole-time thing.... but we do! And we love it!!)

On Friday we went on a picnic to this little park that has water spouts in the ground. The kids had a blast playing in it. Livia did too until she wiped out and hit the back of her head on the ground. Then she cried and took a nap.



Addison had a little "school time" with the kids. How she got all the little ones to sit still that long is beyond me. Good job Addison... that's a difficult task!

Leesa made a little gingerbread haunted house with all the kids. The kids loved it!! Sam was so obsessed with it, he kept asking about it until they finally got to eat it. Livia just loved having easy access to the candy bowls while sitting by a distracted adult. (I have no idea how much she ate!)

On Saturday Dan was so nice to watch ALL the kids so we could get some real sister time! Right after lunch we went to a vinyl party and all spent more than planned... (they were super cute though!) Then we went to Chili's for an early dinner.
There again... talk, talk, talk!

I love talking with my sisters!!!

So, yeah, it was a fun weekend! And I only threw up once during the car ride.... so not bad!

So thank you to all 3 of my awesome sisters for letting me spend some time with you!!

why the trees you ask?

So if you just looked at the change of picture on top of the blog... and thought, "why the trees?" I'll explain quickly.

The temple picture just didn't work with a Halloween scene.

A few weeks ago we took a family hike to these trees. These trees are the trees that Jason carved while we were dating. He took me to this spot when he proposed. So obviously, they are our trees now. Right?

So, yeah. That's why the trees...

Liv's birthday #2

I know this has taken me way longer than planned, so I'm sorry!! (I finally figured out, thanks to Jason doing it for me, how to get my pictures to the computer! Now I can blog with pictures again!)

Anyway, here are a few pictures from Livia's 2nd birthday. We just had my sister, Ronda and her family down for dinner and then had cake and ice cream.

She loves books more than any librarian I know....
.... ok, I don't really know any librarians. Whatever. You get the point.

Every little girl needs to have a copy of Snow White.... right?
As long as she doesn't think it's ok to live with 7 men. And it doesn't matter how short they are. You just don't do it.
(Snow White, I understand your situation though.)

From Aunt Ronda and Uncle Ron she got a baby Belle and an adorable tu-tu.
The tu-tu picture is way to blurry though. Maybe we'll get a shot of that at another time.


The morning of her birthday we woke her up singing Happy Birthday to her. We let her open a couple of presents then.
She's trying to figure out how to get those amazing bubbles out of that bottle....

Unfortunately it didn't take her long. Now those bubbles are no more.... darn spills.

our big 2 year old

Today is Livia's 2nd birthday!

We started the day with the traditional everyone-enters-the-birthday-girl's-room-singing-happy-birthday-to-her thing. She just looked confused and annoyed the light was turned on so abruptly. She cheered up when we showed her a couple of presents though!

We're having a little party tomorrow with a cake and ice cream, so I'll make another post with some pictures.

I just can't believe we have a 2 year old again! She already has the 2 year old personality down to an art... so it's gonna be a fun year!!

Happy Birthday big girl!

Yes.... you can call me crazy.....

But for only one reason! So don't get in the habit of calling me that.

Now with fall coming on, we've been noticing a few signs of small rodents in our home. If you know me, you know that if I can't handle one thing.... it is small rodents.

So the only thing I could think of was this:

I never thought I would say this, but we now have a kitten.

And yes, I know we already have a small petting zoo.... which is why the crazy part is legit.





The kids adore him, we think he's super cute, and Maggie is less than enthused.... she'll get used to it.

Now we just need to settle on a name. We've thought about Cookie, Cowboy, or Petey but nothing has stuck yet. Any suggestions? (He's orange with some slight stripy-ness.)

Why I love being a NoDak....

Top 10 reasons my trip to North Dakota was Awesome:

10. I learned I could fit this much stuff in my trunk.

9. Caramel rolls for breakfast almost every morning.
Yes, yes... delish.

8. I'm always reminded of just how fabulous my little town of Tuttle is. There's no other place like it in the world. Welcome to the town grocery store:

7. Just look at that beautiful sunset.

6. I got to spend many hours driving with Serena to get there.
She's just so great. :)

5. That's where most of my extended family lives.
(My Aunts Donna and Jo and my cousins Lacey and Josh helped watch the kids while we were in the temple. And my Grandma Gietzen is just as sweet as can be.)

4. Spending time with Papa and Nana (aka my parents)

3. Getting to be with my parents and all my sisters and their whole families for a couple of days. Super awesome.

2. Being reminded how lucky I am to have 2 sweet adorable kids and 1 hubba-bubba smokin' hottie of a husband... ;)

1. Getting to be in the temple with Jason and the rest of my family as we did the temple work for my dear Grandma Riskedahl and all her siblings and their spouses. And to top it all off, I was there as I watched my father be sealed to his parents.
What a special day it was.... We did all that temple work as a family, my nephew Braden got baptized, my nephew Andrew (named after my late brother) was blessed and it was my mom's 57th birthday. She called it her best birthday EVER!

July 31, 2010 will be a hard day to top!

If you are interested in seeing all of the pictures from my trip check out my Facebook album, Nodak trip 2010.

one way my life improved

The hardest part of my day is deciding what to make for dinner.

A month or so ago my neighbor told me she was planning on making a monthly menu. At first I thought she was crazy... then I realized she was brilliant.

So I took her idea, tweaked it to make it my own (aka cheaper) and voila.... I now have a monthly menu.


I took my magnet board, spray glued on a neutral paper and printed off a calender on a piece of clear vellum. Then I made a magnet for each month of the year and the numbers 1-31. Now I can arrange the magnets for each new month.

Then I made a list of all the meals I make. (With some blank ones for those I didn't remember or the ones I haven't discovered yet.) I color coordinated them so I can easily pick out the different meals. (yellow=chicken, pink=beef, purple=crock pot, blue=everything else) These I keep on the back side of the board.


All I had to buy (since I already had almost everything I used) was the magnet strips. Which I got for 50% off at Roberts and Michaels. :)

Each week I sit down and figure out what I plan to eat that week, so I still only plan a week at a time instead of a month. (That would be crazy.) This way, I can show Jason the board and he can pick out a few meals he'd like to see that week.

And that's why my life has improved.

lil liv

Livia is little. Like for her age, she is at the smaller end.

And this kid has way too much personality jammed into this little body.

She cracks me up.


This would be her I'm-pretending-to-be-mad-at-you face:
She can only hold it for a few seconds, but she can do it repeatedly for quite a while.

What a kid.