Whew! Back??

Ok. March, the month of all months for our family is over! I think I can finally sit down and blog a little about it! March is FULL for us with 4 birthdays, an anniversary, spring break, and stuff! So this year we did mostly family birthdays with no formal parties and we actually had dad (meaning Garth) here with us for all of it!!! Thank you to all of his staff! This year has rocked for us because of you!

OK so Eli turned 3 on March 2nd!

He got a balance bike for his birthday (that is a bike with out pedals to teach the balance of a bike. The concept is if he learns to balance he won't need training wheels when he is ready to pedal. I must admit I am a little sceptical but I will let you know how that works out.) He thinks it is cool!

We went to the park for his birthday and when asked what he wanted for his birthday dinner it was "fries" so we headed out to McDonalds in the rain with some friends just passing through from Washington. He was very up for opening presents this year and was excited about EVERYTHING!

He especially liked the tool set he got

and continues to wander around telling everyone he's "Got a job to do!"

Emma also enjoyed the tool set!

Will had his favorite Eli present too.

After alot of near misses with the bat and a talk about sharing,

Eli was one happy customer!

Emma turned 9 on March 9th!

She wanted Ramen noodles for her birthday dinner! (These are some huge requests here!)And she chose for her cake an oreo ice cream pie because she is not a fan of any type of frosting or cake (as I have said before).

Will liked it!

Alot I think!

Em liked it too but not as much as her "Dragon Hunters" comic book!

Garth turned 35 on March 14th!
He golfed all day with his best buddy Al for his birthday.

Here is a shot of about how warm it was!
Garth Requested NO CAKE as we were caked out! And for birthday dinner salmon and salad cooked by me. I guess I should be flattered but I think the only reason I really ask what everybody wants is so they will request to go out! Come on people, I would request that!!

We celebrated our 13th wedding anniversary on March 15th!
We partied down by driving sans kids (thank you Jenny) to Horseshoe Bend and taking championship ring orders! Thank you Jostens! It actually was a really fun night! On the way home we stopped for Coldstone and had a nice chat. I love my hubby!!!

No pictures of THAT Celebration!

SPRING BREAK!

First 1/2-= sick = Yuck!

Second 1/2=Kids to Grandmas and Garth & I to Wolfcreek in Utah to celebrate with Gwen & Lawrence. Cuz...

I turned 34 on March 28th!

I got everything I wanted!

A pedicure! I love to get little designs on my toes!

Chinese food at the HOHO Gourmet (even the name is cool!), a shopping trip with a built in babysitter (Garth who happily followed Will as he pushed the stroller all over the mall), games till the sun rose (Lawrence and Gwen are people after my own heart), and enough peanut M&Ms to last a lifetime (or at least the weekend)! It was awesome! Thanks guys.

Done!
Ok.I realize that there is a discrepancy between the amount of pictures for the first half of the month and the second half. In my defense...It's just not as fun to take pictures of grown up peoples birthdays.
Needless to say it was a "SWEEEET" month as Eli would say and now we are all a year older! WOOOO! And there is my long awaited post.
MUSIC NOTES: Notice the playlist is now different. Even if I don't blog sometimes I get on here and post a new playlist cuz I love to pull it up and listen while I am doing my downstairs housekeeping. This one is one I found on a Twilight site (shocker!) and I took all the best songs (which are alot I think) and put 'em on. GOOD RANDOM STUFF!

Back to... The Future!!

Ok! Happy New YEAR!!! It's now 2009 but so many "blog worthy" things have happened in the last few weeks I have to go back to go forward.

On the 17th of December Will turned 1!

I made him a fleece blanket that was not pink. (Explanation: Will likes the fringe on fleece blankets and from day one Eli has refused to share his so Emma shared hers, which happened to be pink. OK for home use but not so masculine for public and Sundays. In short it has driven Mom nuts!)

Here is Will with his favorite person and said boyish blanket.

We had cupcakes which were a hit for everyone...

Emma hates frosting ...notice this is only a cupcake top!

(Pretty picture Em!)

Eli likes only frosting ... Creative

Will was a mixed bag... At first he wan't sure he liked any of it!

Then he decided he liked the frosting and when he got a bite of cake he promptly got rid of that nonsense!

After a few laughs and some coaxing he decided he liked it all!

Next he did a Birthday Dance on his tray! Gross!

We had a great time and he is such a sweet boy! He's a complete MONKEY but he has his Daddy's charm so you end up laughing instead of mad. It only gets more fun as he gets older. We can't imagine our family without him. Love you Will!

HO HO and HO!

Merry Christmas Everybody!

My Twilight Party

Ok. So it's been a few weeks since it happened but I couldn't let it just slide by without blogging about it! The night of the midnight release of the Twilight movie (thats November 20th) I had a Scentsy party with a Twilight theme.

It was a blast!!

I was so proud of my decorations I had to share. I mounted quotes from the book on red and white paper and put them up around the room. This one was on the table...

We had a veggie plate for the "vegetarian vampires" and apples with carmel dip (because of the apple on the cover of the book) and black and white cookies.
This one was on the door...

And I made this big homage to the books to go on the wall as you walk in...

We had 4 pages of Twilight trivia and all in all it was uber cool! Thanks to everybody who came, most of which actually came for the Scetsy stuff and not for the Twilight stuff (imagine that)! I would love to do it again and have an actual dinner and then Twilight Jeopardy or something. Anyway I kept all my decorations so if you are ever having a Twilight party...you know who to call.

P.S. Saw the movie with MY Edward the next night and my initial reaction was Yikes! I hated that! (Garth liked it though.) BUT.. upon viewing it a second time and knowing what was coming and what was not, I really liked it. The effects need some more money (ie the running through the forrest on TOP of the foliage-- PLEASE!!!) but other than that I can tell they really thought about alot. Plus it's just plain fun to see one of my favorite books played out. The music was amazing!!! Ok... I downloaded it early and hated it but after puting those songs with a scene I can't get enough! Even Robert Pattinson's songs which were unbearable to my ears, after looking up the lyrics, I appreciate.

For your listening pleasure I have downloaded MY Twilight playlist (for the books) that I made about a year ago and unveiled to the world at my party. It does have an order but I put the tunes on random mostly so I don't have to hear the same thing every time I log on. (Get's very boring) Enjoy!

Trick or Treat Cubed

So this year was the year I started loosing influence over the Halloween costumes. It's inevitable I know but I just didn't realize it was this year until the actual day arrived.

This year Emma finally fit into the full-body Cheetah costume that her cousin Madison let her borrow. I thought it would be excellent. No buying a cotume for her this year. She was a little dubious about it until I had her try it on and then I thought she caught the vision. She had her best friend Hailey over to go trick or treating with us and I sent the girls up to get into their costumes and this is what came down.
No Cheetahs there!

Turns out she was just placating me but really had no intention of ever being a cheetah. Ok no problem.
Eli ,I had planned on being a train engineer and making a Thomas the Tank Engine out of a box to put over him like he is in the train. However when I got out the costumes that he has worn in the past to try them on Will he decided he wanted to wear the dog costume he wore last year. Again I was stoked! No work involved on that costume! I proceeded to keep asking him during the week just to make sure he didn't change his mind. He hadn't...until we went upstairs to get his costume on and he said, "Mom, I be Mr. (Con)Ducter." Ok- all I had was the hat I had borrowed from my mom but we dressed him up in his navy Sunday clothes and VOILE!

Hip-Hop-O-"Ducter"-us!

At least one child wore exactly what I had planned for them.
Good old fashioned hand-me-downs!

Ahh good times! It was fun though.

As I was looking at our pictures I had to look up pictures of Halloween past and loved to see the kids through the years. Look at this...

Halloween 2006

Eli 6mos.(tiger) and Emma 6 (witch)

Halloween 2007

Eli 1 (dog) and Emma 7 (pirate)

As you can see I'm still trying to figure out how to make this picture thing do what I want it to. If I fiddle with it any longer it will be next Halloween before I post. Anyway I am now using all the Halloween candy as potty training bribes for Eli. TRICKY!! We are on day 2. Hopefully Mom, her washing machine, and carpet can hold out this time. Wish me luck!

OUT!

Testing, Testing, One, Two, Three?...

Ok people I'm out here!

Amazing! I am part of the Blognation. I must say it feels pretty good! Ok here is my initial post of this all encompassing blog.

First I must say a word about my playlist. I think the playlist feature on blogs is BRILLIANT! Don't you think it is interesting to see what people put out there to represent themselves? Ok maybe you don't, but I do so even though my blog doesn't have much right now BY GOLLY it's got a playlist! A little eclectic I know but I wanted to find songs that meant something to US not just me (and I threw in a few that I liked too).

#1 is "Butterflies and Hurricanes" by Muse--Ok... Muse is amazing. We love this song for the message, and the piano, and the drama of it all! Every time Garth and I hear it we get chills.(That may change now that we hear it every time we are on the blog but there it is) "Change everything you are and everything you were. Your number has been called....BEST! YOU'VE GOT TO BE THE BEST! YOU'VE GOT TO CHANGE THE WORLD AND USE THIS CHANCE TO BE HEARD! YOUR TIME IS NOW!!!! Wow! Love it!

Cold Play- this band is Quintessentially Quigley. (Wow that would make a good blog name.) Just a little history---Garth got hooked on them when he first started with Jostens and he had to be in the office for so many hours. They were very soothing after being in the schools all day. He introduced them to me when we were driving to the Salt Lake temple early in the morning and he played "Fix You" for me in the dark car. I don't know why that moment stays with me but needless to say I got hooked. When we first moved into our home 3+ years ago and got a piano Garth ran out and got the sheet music for every song they had and then proceeded to learn every one! We would sing around the piano every night for awhile and Garth, in his eagerness to share his talent would play for everyone who darkened our door (literally, neighbors who came to deliver cookies, the bishop, friends from college just passing through, everyone)but MADE me sing with him every time. I was proud of him and wanted to support him but DANG!! So sorry to any and all of you who had to endure that little piece of awkwardness. "Viva La Vida" is just a great happy song to start with and all my kids sing along when it comes on. "Yellow" is the lullaby that we use to sing to Eli when he was born and I would cry every time at the miracle of having our little boy after waiting so long. "Sparks" is my song for Garth and "Shiver" is his favorite.
Ok that was A LOT of history! Sorry.

#3 "Lucky"-by Jason Mraz. We just stumbled on this song today and LOVE IT!! It is so great! Words-Amazing! Tune- Groovy. Harmony- Stellar. This is how Garth and I feel everyday for each other, LUCKY!

#4 OK High School Musical- I know, I know. But it had to go on there because A.)Em and Eli both sing it, ("Na na na na, you are a music a me" were one of the first lyrics my son ever sang)and B.)I don't know how they feel but, that is a very true statement for me... Garth, Emma, Eli, Will, they are the music in me.

#5 MUSE again. "Starlight" makes me think of Garth cuz it's my ring tone for him. He put it on my phone and when ever he calls my phone says "I'll never let you go if you promise not to fade away. Never fade away." Um "Map of the Problematique" is just cool.

"Breathe in Breathe Out"-Great song that my sister in law introduced to me and I have loved it ever since. (Thanks Mignon!)

"Hero/Heroine"- ok this one is all me. I love this song cuz ever since I was a teenager I have always thought I lived an "enchanted" life. You know like all the fictional books that I read... stuff just turns out right. It may get hairy sometimes, just like in books, but everything always has a happy ending. Most of my happy endings have everything to do with my own personal hero who I just happened to find and marry. TADAH!!!

OK... name one other blog where you got to listen to the entire playlist before you got to the end of the blog about the playlist. And you thought that line under my blog title was just a clever statement. You should really pay attention to my warnings.