The "Real" Santa!

Here is a picture of the REAL Santa with my kiddos. :)

Thanksgiving!

 We have a lot to be thankful for, and we had a blast going up to Salt Lake for Thanksgiving this year. We ate until our heart's content, and we had a blast playing rook, eating, getting slurpees, eating, doing a little bit of shopping, and eating again. :) Julie made the most delicious turkey that I have ever tasted. It was awesome! We mainly sat around in our PJs for three days while our kids raked havoc on Julie's house. The kids love going to Grandma's house.

While we were there, we froze our tooshies off. I have to admit, I am definitely used to the St. George weather. However, we made a huge effort to make sure that we had the kids "snow" clothes so they could get their fill of playing in the snow. They lasted longer than I thought they would, and they loved every minute of it. I'm glad we can still visit the snow.

Grandpa Dave and Grandma Julie took the kiddos to Jungle Jims and the kids had a blast. Little Ayla came with us, and she was adorable! Londyn threw the biggest fit of her life before we went, so I was worried what it would be like when we got there. Luckily, she calmed right down when she saw what was in store for her. I was embarrassed she acted like a lunatic though. She was mad because Ayla had her purse. Of course, something involving a purse would cause so much trouble. I can tell that her "threes" are going to be much worse than her "twos" ever were. Oaklyn was Ayla's little "mother" on all the rides. She enjoyed taking her on the rides and buckling her up into the seats!

I can't believe how much Oaklyn is growing up right now. I am so proud of her. Most the time she is an amazing helper around the house, especially with her littler siblings. I am grateful for her. I am going to need any extra help I can get with baby number 4 coming in less than two months!

I found these pictures on my camera and I couldn't help but post them. These pictures are from when we were picking out our pumpkins for the annual pumpkin extravaganza. Connelly and Londyn were in HEAVEN!


This pregnancy is going pretty good. I am not much of a "happy-go-lucky" pregnant person. I am pretty ornery. I feel myself being moody, and I hate feeling that way. I am grateful that the time for the baby is almost here, but we are not ready in the slightest. I feel very ill prepared this time. We need to get busy on preparing the house for our new arrival. I am sure I am in for a HUGE adjustment.

Connelly's Wolverine Turkey!

Connelly had an assignment of helping a turkey "hide" from being eaten on Thanksgiving. He had the idea of camouflaging the turkey by dressing him up as Wolverine. He was quite proud (and so was I to be honest) of how cute the turkey ended up!

Londyn Lou is THREE!

My sister in law Jessica made this adorable cake for Londyn's third birthday. Londyn absolutely LOVED it (and so did I!!). I can't believe that she is already three years old.

This picture describes her perfectly. Every day she just HAS to wear one of Oaklyn's old dance outfits. She changes her clothes at least 6 times a day, and she LOVES to dance. It is pretty funny that she wouldn't go into dance class when we tried a few months ago, because she talks about it like she is in "dance class" regularly. We'll try again soon.

This picture is so cute of her little smile. This was taken in the middle of singing her Happy Birthday!

She got a few different presents, but the thing she wanted the very most was "princess lip gloss". What a girly girl. Grandma and Grandpa Tuttle got her a "Tangled" Barbie and she has played with it every day since. Grandma Julie and Grandpa Dave got her a new dress and black shoes. She was so excited that she HAD to wear it to McDonald's for her birthday lunch.

Dan and I and the kids got her a new baby, a Bell Barbie for the tub, her lip gloss and a birthday outfit. It was fun to spoil her for the day. (Let's be honest, she is pretty spoiled EVERY day, but she was extra spoiled that day).

We finished off the night at IHOP with Daddy since he didn't get to go with us to McDonald's.

A few fun things about Londyn right now:
She LOVES soup. She asks for it almost every day. She especially liked the corn chowder that I made the other day.
She loves "dip dip" AKA Ketchup.
She loves milk in a sippy cup, and I have to be careful to not give it to her too much or she won't eat anything else.
She LOVES for her nails to be painted.
She loves the tub, but she HATES getting her hair washed.
She hates getting her hair brushed out.
She is pretty good if I take something away from her, she just says, "Can I maybe have it tomorrow?" Then I say, "maybe" and she is ok with that answer! (What a crack up).
She talks all day long. She tells me about her "dance class" her friends, Hiley, Chloe, and Trey Trey. She is my little shadow.
She loves Costco, and wants to go there almost every day. I have to explain to her that we don't need to go to Costco on a daily basis.
She got her first hair trim the other day to help with the tangles.
She loves dress up clothes.
She asks for Baby Baby by Justin Beiber so that she can dance to it on a daily basis.

I love your guts Londyn Lou. You make me smile with your fun personality. She really is a bubbly girl who loves to socialize with her little friends. She picks up on what I say a little too much though. Today she told me that her toys were being "annoying." :)

More pictures of the Pumpkin Party!

My cousin Eryn (one of my favorite people in the world, might I add) took a bunch of pictures the night of the pumpkin party! I am so glad because I didn't get ANY pictures! So I hijacked her pictures to show how much fun the party was.

Here is a picture of my Mom and Dad and my brother Court. How fun!!! Court and I are very close and I am so glad he was able to make the trek down to St. George for the party.

Here is a picture of my cute cousin Eryn and I. :)

Here is Jess and Maximo!

Nicole who had her first pumpkin carving party experience just moved into town with her hubby Justin from L.A. We were so excited to have them to the festivities. Justin is my first cousin too! :)

Here I am (being an idiot) with Justin and Scott. Love these guys. Scott makes me crack up every time he opens his mouth. I love it. Justin was a major carver this year who took on the spiderman pumpkin. Way to go!!!

And here were the invites from this year. Thank to Adrian for helping me with this part. I wanted to do a new design, but I was unsure of how to do it...she is always my go to girl for that stuff! :)

All in all we had an absolute blast.

We were caught in a dilemma this year because our pumpkin party is the biggest event of the year, and in years past we have always had "families" come. It was always fun to have the kids come and help carve the family pumpkins that night. But, this year we found that the list of people we wanted to invite is getting longer and longer (which is soooo fun!). We counted the amount of kiddos that could potentially come to the party and there were almost 80 children on the list. We decided that it was impossible to accommodate that many kids PLUS the adults this year. I was sad, but we ended up making the party "adults only". It was a great change, and I honestly had a better time because of the change. I love kiddos, but sometimes it is good to just get away for a little while and enjoy the company of adult friends. I think we will continue the tradition next year with adults only again.

New Job for Danny Boy.

Dan started a new job on Monday, and I am so proud of him. We have worked for the same company for over 4 years, and for the last year and a half, he has been the property manager for Pine Valley Townhomes in Washington. He was great at it.

Well, as of Monday he is the new Manager of Maintenance. He is also in charge of book keeping and accounting, and since he is definitely a "number cruncher" type of guy, he will be GREAT at it. As the manager of maintenance, he is in charge of all of the maintenance personnel in the company. Plus with being in charge of the bills, he will be able to keep an amazing close eye on where the money is being spent. (Believe me, I know how GREAT he is at that...since I go to Wal-Mart, and he calls me instantly to ask what I bought...gotta love it.)

I am excited for him to be a lot closer to home since his office is about 2 minutes away now. :) YAY!

We've had a whirl-wind over the last two weeks. Dan started his new job, and our ward got split. We are anxiously awaiting two new callings since everyone got released instantly. :) The unknown is always hard for me.

Halloween 2010

This post is going to be VERY random, so feel free to skim. We started out Halloween week with an INVASION of flies. We could not believe how many flies were in our house. I had cleaned the oven, so I left the doors open for a little while. HUGE mistake. I was trying to air out the house, but instead, I created a perfect place for the abnormal amount of flies to go. I noticed after this event that flies covered my car and the outside stucco of our home. I guess it was the weather or something.  Dan ran to the store to get a bunch of those sticky fly tapes and this is what they looked like after a day or so. YUCK! We knew we were having a lot of company coming to our home, so we wanted to get rid of them before our guests came.

Oaklyn got to dance as the pre-show for Odyssey Dance Company's Thriller, and she did a GREAT job. She is getting to be such a great dancer. Grandma and Grandpa Kjar were in town, so they came to watch her dance too.

Since the stage was so small, they broke up Oaklyn's team into two different performing days, so this is only half of her team.

Londyn, bless her tired little heart, was so beat by the time Halloween came that she kept falling alseep all over the house. She is in a hard stage right now. We are trying to take away her nap because if she gets one, she will not go to sleep at night. But, if we lose track of her for a second, she will fall asleep around 4 or 5 o'clock.

The kids helped carve pumpkins and had an absolute blast with the annual Ulrich pumpkin tradition. Connelly and Max were especially excited. Mike and Jess even went and picked up a few extra small pumpkins for the boys to carve. They were so enthusiastic, and they carved their pumpkins almost all by themselves!

We had a lot of family that came to the festivities and it was so much fun! As always Mike and Jessica were carving fools, and both sets of parents did great fulfilling their "quotas." I kept joking that they couldn't go to bed until they had carved more pumpkins! I was really kidding, but they honestly carved their hearts out. I was honestly in awe at how many pumpkins were carved this year. Mike carved 25 pumpkins HIMSELF! Dan and Mike stayed up until 3:30 for several nights in a row. I am bummed that I didn't get any pictures of my cousins because Eryn and Scott came and carved, and so did Justin and Nicole. We had a blast laughing until all hours of the night.

Oaklyn decided to be a skeleton this year, and she was so excited to have black hair. It was REALLY hard to get out of her red hair though. So, for trick or treating on Saturday, she opted not to redo that part. (I was glad). The kids had a blast at the trunk or treat, their class parties, and the Ulrich Family festivities. Con man was a ninja!

Here are some pics of the trick or treating. We are always so tired by the time this comes around that we only go for about 15 minutes (SHHHH, don't tell the kids this is abnormal). The kids got so much candy at the trunk or treat, they didn't need anymore, and they had fun going around the block in our neighborhood. :) Londyn was so tired that she didn't want to get out of the stroller much. We forgot to get a picture of her in her Fi-Fi the dog costume.

We ended up with right around 80 pumpkins this year. Holy moly. What a crazy couple of days. It was a blast! This year was kind of hard on me because I am so big pregnant. I was so tired by Halloween, that all I wanted to do was sit on the couch. :)

Thanks to Julie and Jessica, my house was clean, the kids were entertained by a million activities. I love having family in town. I wish they all lived closer! (meaning....move to St. George). :)

The pumpkin tradition is always a huge group effort. Here we all are trying to decide the best way to set out the pumpkins! We light them all with candles (thanks to Julie for bringing the left over Lion House candles), and some pumpkins need two.

For a few days after the event, the pumpkins sat on the side of the house. Connelly was in HEAVEN bashing the pumpkins. We finally got them all in the garbage cans yesterday. It takes a few weeks to recoup. :)

Here he is...so proud of his bashing skills.

We had a great time this year, and we hope to continue the tradition for many years to come. Good thing we have a year before the next one because the smell of rotten pumpkin is still a little fresh for me. :)

When did my 2 year old become independent?

Londyn hasn't felt good since yesterday. She has thrown up a few times, but it comes and goes. Last night I debated whether or not to let her sleep in her bed because I didn't know if she would throw up or not. Well, Dan and I were up watching TV and we kept hearing her door open and shut. I figured she was going to the potty or something. Well, after the third or fourth time Dan went up to check on her.

She was going back and forth between the bathroom and her bedroom to try and clean up the little bit of throw up that had gotten on her rug. She was gathering toilet paper. She didn't cry, she didn't call for me, she was just quietly cleaning it up all by herself. WHAT?!?! It kind of broke my heart. My two year old little girl who isn't feeling well is cleaning up her own throw up?

Well this morning, I heard her in the kitchen around 7:15. We were still in bed and I could hear her struggling with the fridge. I finally got out of bed to go check on her about five minutes later. She knows how to get her own drink of water out of the dispenser, but the "ice" button was pushed and she can't figure out how to change it to the water.

I couldn't find her. I heard her wimpering upstairs in the bathroom, so I went up to see what she was doing. She had filled her cup full of ice and couldn't get water, so she went upstairs, climbed up onto the cupboard and filled her cup with water up there.

I guess she figured it would be easier to get water from the place she knew how to. I'm sure she was super thirsty, but why didn't she just come ask me to get her a drink? Because she is independent. :(

Here she is eating a piece of plain swiss cheese. (yuck) I like swiss in certain recipes or melted on a sandwich, but I don't like it plain. She is in the habit of getting her own out of the fridge whenever she needs a snack. 

Right now she is laying on the couch watching "Boost and the Beast" her name for Beauty and the Beast. What a cutie.

Through the eyes of a six and seven year old.

 I loaded my small camera's pictures onto my computer, and I found some doozies! My kids must have hijacked the camera and had a hay day. Oaklyn must have been the photographer while Con Man was the model.

 This one has a bunch more random shots. How funny.

Pretty funny to see the world through the eyes of my six and seven year olds for a few minutes! Fun.

Our happenings!

Londyn started dance two weeks ago. It was a HUGE disaster. In fact, I thought the first week was a fluke because she was sooo excited to start. So, we tried it another week. She screamed and cried the second week too.

So, we will try again in six months or so. I was bummed. She sure looked cute though.

We took the kids swimming this weekend, and they had a blast! I love how warm it still is in St. George! Dan is one of the kids when it comes to stuff like this. Me?...I'd rather sit on the side of the pool and read.

Things are going good with baby number four. I have an ultrasound this Friday, and I'm excited. Those are always fun.  I am more than halfway done, but I'm pretty darn huge. I'm pretty self conscious already about it. BAAAA. I have been asked TWICE already how close I am to my due date. It is embarrassing to say I'm only 21 weeks. I'm more emotional these days, so I'm sure I'm just being sensitive.

On a lighter note...All Things Thrifty is going soooo good! I am quite proud of Dan and I. A.T.T. exceeded 6100 readers this weekend. This is the amount of people that read the site from their e-mail. Then, I have about 3,100 different people that come to the site every day. Dan got his first "how to" phone call at his office the other day! Funny. We are keeping busy, and have a few projects in the works.

Thank heaven for Dan. One of my neighbors made the comment to me this weekend that I am lucky to have a husband like him because most husbands would NOT help their wives with projects like Dan does. I am VERY aware of how much Dan helps me, and there is no way that All Things Thrifty would be as successful with out his expertise. I'm lucky to have him to go to when I have an idea. He's REALLY good at figuring out how to make my visions a reality!

Here are a couple other highlights of what is going on right now:
*I am enjoying being home this semester, and I can honestly say that it has been a relief to not be teaching right now.
*We are in FULL Halloween mode, and have already started decorating!  YAY!
*Naming this baby might be the hardest one yet. Darn.
*Our backyard project was suppose to be started, but things haven't worked out on the money front. Having this baby is EXPENSIVE, so, we may not get done as quick as we wanted. (This is the part where I wish I would have taught classes...that extra mula would come in handy...but our lives would be mass chaos).

As always we are staying busy. Things are good, and we are very blessed. I'm looking forward to October, and it will be a busy, eventful month!

Fish Lake 2010!

I am absolutely exhausted, but since I was sitting at the computer, I decided to force myself to quickly post some of the cute pictures from this weekend. We went to Fish Lake, and we had a lot of fun. The kids ran ragged...got super dirty...and LOVED every minute of it.

Just check out the dirt on Londyn's face...it speaks for the entire weekend. I can't tell you how many times I washed her face!

Here is Oakey relaxing on the four wheeler! Such a crack up!

Here is my Mom and Connelly relaxing in the beautiful meadow while we were flying kites!

Here is Uncle Jason...my kids have love/hate relationship with their Uncle Jase. They love him...but then he starts telling them that they have to come to his house for a week and they kind of freak out. Check out Ashton's hair. It is soooo blond and super curly...love him!

Here's the star of the weekend. Sure love this kid. We haven't gotten to see him much for the past two months, but it was great to spend the weekend together. LOVE, love, love him. Isn't he handsome!?!?

Addie is flying her kite higher and higher. We had so much fun trying to figure out the "best" strategies of flying.

 Grandpa and Con Man getting ready to fly their kite!

Here's my Nat. Love her.

And Aubs...great as ever. Hopefully they will end up in So. Utah so they'll be close to us again!

My cousin Amber snapped a picture of some of us (Adrian and her family had already left) :(.

We had a blast...but my back is ready to KILL me for sleeping on an air mattress for three nights. I think it was a combination of pregnancy, sharing the mattress with Oaks and Con, getting up to use the bathroom, and the cold. It got down to 20 degrees some of the nights! COLD for my St. George bones!

All in all we had a blast. I wish I would have taken more pictures.

Con Man is in KINDERGARTEN!!

Finally Connelly started Kindergarten. I say "finally" because he was old enough last year...by two days. But, we held him back so he'd be the oldest, and he absolutely loves it.

He wouldn't tell me much about his first day other than Tiago (his cute little friend up the street) got in trouble, but that he (Connelly) was good. I tried to pry things out of him a few times, but then he resorted to telling me that "what we do there is secret." I guess that was his excuse for not spilling the beans. I can't help it...I'm his mom...i wanted to know ALL the details. He's not much of a detail kid. He's not much of a talking kid either. He's just simply happy to go with the flow.

Today he got home and said the funniest thing. He said, "There's this girl in my class...she's a girl....and she said that she's my girlfriend. I DON'T WANT HER TO BE MY GIRLFRIEND ANYMORE!"

That's awesome.

Then I asked, "What is her name?"

Con, "I don't know."

Of course. I'm not surprised.

My kids are GROWING UP!!!

Oaklyn is growing up before my eyes! I can't believe it! Last week, she had to try out for the Mini Team for her dance class. There were too many girls her age, so the instructor needed to split the class based on their abilities. I was very nervous for her, but she didn't skip a beat. I have never had an actual "try out" yet as a parent. How scary!! She did great, and I found out today that she made the team. She is a very determined dancer, and I'm not surprised, but I was still nervous!

She also lost her first tooth last week. She has been anxiously waiting to lose one for over a year now. She is a bit behind on this "tooth losing" stuff. I think it is because she didn't get her first tooth until she was 15 months old. So, I'm sure this first one will start a rapid domino effect and she'll start losing teeth right and left!

I have one year before Oaklyn turns 8! What!?!? I have a lot of work to do.

First day of School! Backyard mud!

I cannot believe that school has already started here in St. George. I remember always starting school the last week of August when I was growing up. Oaklyn started on August 11th. It snuck up on us, and I can't believe that she is already in second grade! Her teacher is Mrs. Read, and she says she is very nice. Here are a few pictures from the first day of school. She wanted her hair braided...which it doesn't fit very well since her hair is so thin, but I wanted her to be excited about it, so we did our best. I love her poses in the pictures!

Our backyard is one big mud pit right now since we took down an above the ground pool that we had back there for summer. When the water spurted throughout the yard, Oaklyn and her friend Bailey had a blast playing in the mud. They played out there for hours! It was so cute. Oaklyn doesn't mind getting dirty one bit!

As you can see in the picture below, Dan has the line drawn around the tramp with spray paint...we will be putting this tramp in the ground in the next couple of weeks. Connelly was having a blast posing for the camera too.

And of course, little Londyn has to join the mud fun. Her face has been constantly dirty this summer since all she wants to do is go out and play in the back yard...which is full of dirt and mud. Hopefully the dirt will all be covered up in the next few weeks with grass and rocks!

Here is the official "before" picture of the back yard! We have a LOT of work to do.