Halloween '07

Dad took the kids shopping for Halloween costumes this year while mom was in Vegas a few weeks ago. They all did a pretty dang good job. Ry was a PRINCESS (of course...its all she talks about...princesses, purses, and makeup) and Cole was a NINJA. They were definatly the cutest kids on the block (sorry if your kids are on our block :o)

MOM was the TOOTH FAIRY. It was something i threw together last minute with what we had at home. I wasn't planning on dressing up until i woke up that morning but it sure was fun. DAD was....THE DAD! I had him convinced to wear Cole's Superman cape for about 2 minutes...but it didn't last.


This is my kids on drugs....i mean..Halloween candy! after all the trick or treating they could handle...or should I say..we could handle!

HELP!

Has anyone else ever had trouble keeping their pictures on their blog. Nothing about the way i take or upload pictures has changed but i can't seem to keep the last few posts in one piece. They are there when i first post and then the next day they're gone. Buggin! Is it just me? And ps. I can't seem to upload a camera video, what am i doing wrong, does anyone have any suggestions?

SK8in FOOL!

Cole...(ps. and dad)are learning how to skate. Its their new favorite thing and their getting pretty serious about it. If you know anything about my boys their both die hards. Cody's been teaching Cole that you never quite, even when ya fall off ya get back up and do it again. They've both been taking some serious hits. Some more than others...lol! dads been limping around here for the last two days now cause he rolled his ankle pretty good when he tried dropping in the first day he got his new skateboard. Our neighbor built a skate ramp up by his house. Thats usually where i can find them if their missing. In fact Cody helped him put in a flood light on the side of his house so they can go out there and do it when it gets dark now. I have to admit...it's pretty cute! Rylee's even getting in on the fun!

Poor little Brett!

Ok...so he's not so little anymore but my 16 year old nephew Brett broke his leg lastweek in a motor bike accident. We had just returned from spending a few days at Grandpa Campbells house in Shelly and then the very next day my sister Julie called to tell us Brett was in the Blackfoot hospital. (just 15 minutes or so from Shelly) So Friday morning the kids and I turned back around to drive 3 and half hours back to Idaho. It was so worth it! We've really been missin Brett and Colt since they went to live with their dad in Blackfoot. Cole had school that day so i asked him if he wanted to stay home and go to school or drive with me to see Brett. He really really likes his cousins Brett and Colt so of course he wanted to go see them. Geez mom what kind of a question was that?

First Annual Jones/Kessler/Campbell Reunion

Ouray Colorado - October 11-16



Went on a fun family trip to Colorado with the Kessler's to visit the Jones's. Brandy and Coby moved to Grand Junction about a year ago. This was our first trip out there to see them. We drove as far as Grand Jct. to their house on Thursday stayed the night and then got up and drove with them to their friends vacation home in Ouray. Oh my gosh beautiful! Lets just say it was such a fun, relaxing way to spend the weekend! Did a little fishing on the most beautiful private lake, TOTALLY MY KIND OF FISHING!!! You could pretty much catch a fish everytime you threw your line in. The kids LOVED it...ok and so did mom.







Had a serious fish fry for breakfast/lunch. I couldn't bring myself to touch the fish head but Brandy came pretty close to having Ry kissin it!


this is where i sat a read a book....ahhhhh!




We even had the boys singing and doing dishes together.


Here are the kids warming up by the fire after playing outside in the rain with their dads. For the sake of this being a family site I won't post the pictures of the boys playing basketball in the rain. Their shirts got a little heavy being so wet and all...so clothes started comin off.....i know..iknow...if your really dying to see them, i can email them to you :o) let me know!


Sunday we drove into the town of Ouray to check out some cool sites and scenery.


We ate like royalty for every meal. This kitchen had like 20 sets of different dishes, we ate with a different color every day.

So ya know when you get so behind on something that it becomes too overwhelming... so you just continue to put it off. That would be the story of my life but right now i'm talking about this little blog i've started and PROMISED myself to keep up with. So were gonna do a quick October overview...

October 4-7 I went on a little girls weekend to Lava Hot Springs with 8 other little ladies (what a bonding experience!). We rented this cute little house where we just hung out, played lots of games, and ate lots of junk food by day and soaked in the private hot pools by night. Left the little ones home to spend the weekend with dad. That meant lots of cold cereal, McDonalds happy meals, and matinee movies. They love it when dads in charge. (ps. I forgot my dang camera...unbelievable, i know, so i'm still working on getting some pictures from the other girls)

Cole's Birthday at the Circus

Coles birthday was a little different this year than the previous 4. we've always had a big birthday party with friends and lots of presents, cake and ice cream. this year i decided to go a little smaller. I told him he could pick one very special friend to go the circus with. He picked Natalie...of course! If you ever ask Cole who his best friend is or who he is going to marry...he would say NATALIE! They've been best friends since birth and have always had a special little bond. (its so cute) So we met Natalie's mom, dad and little brother Brady and went to the circus! It was a bello bello bello bello BRATION! If you know anything about the barnum and bailey's circus you would know what i'm talkin about! whew...lets just say it was a crazy good time!





Ry was mesmerized by the clowns! She just didn't know what to do when they tried to give her five. She had front row seats for the pre-show and LOVED it!

Go Cougars

wet...cold....and windy.. Was the theme of Saturdays BYU game at home against Air Force. This was the first game this year that we have been able to attend. It was a little surprise for my dear Cody...well kinda. It went a little something like this. I found tickets on ksl classifieds and decided not to tell him. I made arrangements to meet the seller on thursday afternoon while cody was at work. Cody decided to surprise us and came home early and said "lets have a fun family day" hmmm...what was i to do? We decided to take the kids to lunch and a matinee so i told him that i needed to meet someone off the draper exit which was already in the proximity of our afternoon fun day anyway. He questioned me...a lot! but i just didn't answer...i just told him that it was something i really needed. He made the assumptions that it had something to do with my classified addiction and couldn't believe i was spending X amount of money on something i bought off the DANG classifieds. I heard all about how ridiculous it was for our 15 minute drive. So there we were sitting in the parking lot waiting for the seller and Cole blurts out from the backseat "DAD, MOM BOUGHT YOU BYU TICKETS!" (i never let Cole in on the secret because...well thats obvious) i turned around and said "cole what are you talking about?" He said "Mom, i heard you talking to uncle jason on the phone, you told him and he's going to babysit us" I was busted...needless to say i think my husband felt a little sheepish for assuming that my classified shopping addiction had gotten so out of hand that i would have to go around him to buy some furniture or home decor for X amount of money. I'm really not going to share how much i really spent on tickets to a football game...its embarrasing, but so worth a fun afternoon with my husband.

Cody's Marathon

HE DID IT!!! He had a little trouble with his knee about 5 miles into it but he toughed it out and finished. More than I can ever even imagine doing. So proud of him!


Cole ran the last little distance and crossed the finish line with his dad. It was pretty cute!


I think he's falling asleep here. It was 26.2 miles...i'd be falling asleep too!


Grandma Hoggan came to support Cody AND snuggle with Rylee :o)


After the race we went to lunch with some of Cody's Colorado friends. Rachel also ran the race so her family and friends Heather and Suzanna came to cheer her on. He went to high school with these cute girls. (There were too many cameras going off at once, nobody could focus on just one)


AND PS...GO COUGARS! Not a good week for the team but my kids sure look cute in blue!

Back to PRE-SCHOOL...for the 3rd time

Does this look like a boy ready for pre-school AGAIN or what? Cole has a September birthday so he misses the deadline to move on to kindergarten this year by a few days. So this will be his 3rd year of pre-school. He's been excited to go to school since his first birthday so we started him young. He loves to learn and I think with his "preschool resume" he will be leaps and bounds ahead of his classmates when he finally makes it to kindergarten...but i'm kind of a bias mom.

ok...did i mention it was my birthday? oh right.. i did

I just had to share about what an incredible husband i have! I mean seriously, he pulled off the biggest surprise in our 6 year marriage history. not only did he spoil me rotton on the saturday before my birthday but he managed to pull off a little surprise party on sunday as well! It was all part of the plan to make me think saturday was it. So...Sunday he tells me were going for a drive (might i add that he told me i didn't need to dress up...we weren't going to be seeing anyone..what a jerk..right?) so woke up from my sunday nap and jumped in the car...blindfolded. drove around playing some "guess where we are game" for about an hour and a half until we reached our final destination. I was sure we were somewhere in bountiful. He pulls off the blind fold and i'm standing in my backyard with just about everyone i know. What a surprise that was. Sure do love him...he's a tricky one! I'm not even going to share the pictures from this one. There were like 5 snap shots of me coming around the corner with a look of complete dumb-founded..ness! (is that a word?) Seriously looked like a DUMB 30 year old...so use your imagination if you weren't there.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME...wait...and my kids?

My sister JULIE is freaking incredible. The girl goes above and beyond the call of sisterhood. She sent me "a little birthday package" as she would say....but there was nothing little about it. The box was bigger than i was, i really could probably have sat inside it. So we open it up and found all sorts of fun boxes...a little something for all of us. the cutest art box for cole filled with all sorts of preschool workbooks, crayons, glue, scissors, totally customized just for cole, with his name on everything. ps...for those preschooler moms here is a website she customized the "dot to dot learning how to write worksheet" thingys. He seriously hasn't stopped coloring, drawing, cutting and glueing since he got it.





For Rylee she sent this cute box full of everything for my little potty girl. Panties, a little potty doll with all the accessories, potty treats, a makeup bag full of lipgloss, fingernail polish and lotion. LOVE IT!





oh ya and for me. all sorts of little fun stuff!



We sure do LOVE our AUNT JULIE!

My addiction!

ok..so something you may not know about me....i have this addiction of continually recycling my furniture via ksl.com classifieds and craigslist.com. Lets just say....i get bored lookin at the same stuff everyday. Gotta change the scenery every now and then, ya know what i mean? Here are a few of my most recent finds. The kid's bedroom was driving me crazy (yes, cole and rylee share a room) cole had this ginormous twin bed that took up the entire bedroom and rylee had a little toddler bed and they didn't match :o( so we needed to free up some space. I found these CUTE and i mean so cute toddler bunk beds. No, this isn't something you can buy at the stores but somebody had the same problem i had (two kids and ONE small room) so they made them. I found this at an incredible steal at $70. I then came home and posted cole's bed on ksl and someone came and picked it up within the hour for $100. talk about a deal. i now have the cute little mini me room i've always wanted for my kids, now i just need to work on coordinated bedding.





My second find: a new entertainment center for my living room. sold my old one for $300 bought this for $280. So after all is said and done i made money on my home makeover!

Is it Monday already?

Is it Monday already? ok, i just looked at the time..i guess its technically tuesday. the weekends never last long enough. We had so much fun this weekend. Our friends, brandy and coby were in town from grand junction colorado. We met The Jones's about 41/2 years ago. Cole was just a baby and they had just gotten married. We met through friends of friends of friends...you know one of those stories. Anyways LOVE them. Hate that they had to move so far away now but love when they come to visit. We got dinner Saturday night and took it to the park to let the kids run like monkeys. We then came home put them to bed and played some wild games like pirates of the carribean and ticket to ride. It was pretty intense!! Sunday we met up with our other friends Mike and Brittany went to Sugar house park bbq'd and yada yada. So without ALL the details i will just say we had a dang good weekend and Monday came around all too fast. PS..they have the cutest kids! Little Keedon (ooh hope i spelled that right, sorry brandy) and Quinton.



me and brandy...color of the picture turned out all funky, so sepia it is!



mike, cody & coby (who all have birthdays within 4 days of eachother)

POTTY TRAINING

POTTY TRAINING Need i say more? So...we've been a little busy over here at our house...this potty training deal is A LOT of work!!! Ry's been wanting to go potty for the last several months now but WE (as in Cody and I) just really weren't ready! So after driving us crazy for several weeks stripping down to nothing at any given point to "Go Potty" we just decided we better just take the plunge and get it over with. SO....today is the day...we're committed! Ry and i went shopping this morning and bought all the necessary equipment, like princess panties (as you can see, she's pretty excited about those!), and lots of drinks and potty treats. So far no accidents. It's just sitting in the bathroom all day when theres a million other things to do thats killin me. Hmmm...we really could be done with diapers....for awhile anyway :o)

So...after a day full of run arounds and blah blah blahs, the kids and i had a good night together. (dad was still sick in bed) We had a 6 o'clock dinner tonight so around 8:30 cole kept asking when dinner was going to be ready (It obviously wasn't that memorable) so we had to have a little bed time snack. I made popcorn and we read bedtime stories...lots of em' Each time i finished a book Cole would say "but mom...were not done with our popcorn yet" so i'd have to read another. After all the popcorn it was time to brush our "teef" as Rylee would say. Rylee loves brushing her "teef". After 20 minutes of "brushing" I have to pry that little barbie brush from her pudgy little fingers just so we can all go to bed.