handsomes

see these three handsomes?  yup, there sporting bow ties from Plum Lovelies on etsy.  I love it!!  

deck the halls

Once Thanksgiving was digested we decided to dive right into Christmas!  On black Saturday (is that a real tittle?) we braved the cold to pick out some Christmas decor.  We each picked an ornament for ourselves; Kade picked Mater, Crew picked Lightning McQueen, Brody picked a pencil, I picked a little kitchen aid and justin picked a travel suitcase.  "We" also picked a star to top our tree.  I say we because I had a super cute star picked out, but was unanimously outvoted 3-0 by the little guys in favor of the sparkly red glitter star instead.  Here's a little tree decorating:

The boys are at wonderful Christmas ages.  Everything is so exciting and they love seeing all the lights and decor where ever we go.  The loved decorating the tree... and taking the ornaments off...and redecorating again...and taking everything off again.  Needless to say if you dropped by our house now you'd notice our tree is only decorated on the top third of it's branches- that's for a reason, and since the redesign we haven't had a problem!

The boys have also really enjoyed doing the advent calendar, we do ours a little differently, we open the doors every three days so everyone has a turn, it's really helped to keep the holiday cheer in the home!

Celebrating Christmas with your kids really makes the season so much sweeter, it's so fun to share traditions you've loved as a kid, I'm grateful my little guys are enjoying the season!

holiday head attire

I love brody's preschool!  Not just because they take my child for a large chunk of the day, but they do super cute projects!  Last Christmas i mentioned the brody caroler which was quite amusing, and this year, especially recently, he's come home with a slew of holiday hats.  Here's what's come through our doors:

Halloween Boo

His class started discussing native americans in preperation for thanksgiving and each kid was given a native american name.  If I were to choose brody's name I probably would have chosen "He-who-talks-without-stopping" but his teachers are much nicer and gave him the cute name Fire Wolf.

The day of his thanksgiving feast he came home with this pilgrim attire:

Yesterday was my favorite... gobble gobble!

So take this as inspiration and design your own holiday head attire!  Make it work!

halloween

i've got three young boys, so naturally when halloween rolls around i want their costumes to be fun and have a cohesive theme. the first year they were lions and tigers and bears (oh my!), last year was jedi, c3po and r2d2, this year was an astronaut, earth and the moon:

my idea came before the construction. i searched online and didn't have much luck, did you know planet costumes don't exist? apparently it's not a "popular option" for kids these days. justin and i put our heads together and with two extra large paper lanterns, white duct tape for reinforcement, spray paint and craft paint, we were finally in business!! i LOVE how it turned out! they're skinny little legs were so cute coming out from the big old planet!

halloween night we had a mini halloween party and cousin jacob came trick or treating too:

after that it was out for trick or treating! at first there was some apprehension, but crew got in the zone real quick and was pretty much on auto pilot after that!!

the night was really fun! it's always a treat to watch your kids discover holidays and traditions you remember loving as a kid!

as a funny side story, since the costumes were paper the boys didn't get to put them on until halloween night (for fear of ripping.) i put the earth on kade and the moon on crew. they both fussed, started freaking out, and began wiggling out of their costumes. i thought my dream had ended. after the costumes were off kade went to the moon and crew went to the earth and they put them on a were perfectly happy after that!! these guys are crazy sometimes, but i love em with everything i have, after all, they're my whole world!

preschool halloween

the thursday before halloween were the halloween festivities at brody's preschool. the morning started off with a costume parade, which is always really interesting, it's so fun to see what all the different things kids want to be for halloween. that being said, here's our guy:

and here he is in the parade:

doesn't it seem like he's really going to go walk into a space shuttle and take off? after the parade there was the class costume pic:

i was able to find a baby sitter to go to his class halloween party, they made a hershey bar into a mummy, a classmate into a mummy:

ate some spooky snack like gummy centipedes

concocted a witches brew of swamp water (green lemonade), spiders, eyeballs, centipedes, and dragon scales:

it was such a fun day! i love being able to watch brody in a classroom setting, and his teachers seem to enjoy him. after watching his "dance moves" since the year's began, one of his teachers recommended i put him in break dance lessons so he can go on sycytd one day.... hmm, it's a good point. i guess if he doesn't pursue the whole astronaut thing he can always be a B boy.

byu v. tcu

So before Justin started at his job the company didn't have any lds doctors. Since Justin started, another lds guy from SC started, and his boss (Chris) has opened a new office with an lds guy. suddenly mormons are popping up all over the company and when Chris heard how many people would be attending the byu vs. tcu game at cowboy stadium he arranged for a suite. yup, a fully catered (texas bbq), all you can drink (not really an option for most attending), with comfy leather chairs in. a. suite. to say the guys were excited is probably a really big understatement. they loved it!

ryan, rob and mike watching the game

view from the box

the boys and grandma. the boys all knew about the suite and grandma thought she was attending the game in a seat like a bunch of other fans. to say she was surprised and delighted is also an understatement!

Chris had a little "wager pool" that rewarded the person who matched the score at the end of each quarter. it wasn't actually gambling since Chris supplied everyone's money, but people still won. grandma won first, $75.

no one won the second quarter so the pot rolled over. ryan won $150 the third quarter.

Chris ended up winning the fourth quarter but said he'd rather give the money to grandma if she would "make it rain downstairs." here's the video:

she said it was one of the funnest things she's ever done! Seriously who wouldn't want to throw a bunch of money out to people?!

The boys and grandma had a great time and really enjoyed the suite, despite the loss. here's a pic with all the doctors and his boss Chris in the red Texas Rangers (ouch!) shirt.

zoo

the byu v tcu game (at cowboy stadium) was last weekend so naturally we had some visitors! justin's parents, his brothers mike and ryan, and his grandma lil came to visit. we kicked off the festivities with a trip to the zoo. we figured the kids would love it and zoo animals can always provide some sort of entertainment for adult as well. speaking of kids loving it, crew kind of didn't. he was a little freaked out the whole time and seemed to come around right as we were leaving. he needed a constant comforting companion for the day, which knowing crew, shouldn't have surprised me in the least!

our resident animal lover, kade, really enjoyed the day! he was super excited to watch the turtles swim. he also tried to squeeze through the fence to go play with some baboons.

he can't read, but he seemed to know that this was the door for him:

brody enjoyed tour guiding everyone around, and learning to read the park maps. at one point we didn't want to even look at the elephants because there was a map station near by. you guessed it, his new obsession is directions (N, S, E, W), he loves the compass iphone app mike showed him. now whenever we're in the car he asks which direction were going. like every. single. turn. super fun.

the boys were able to find the strollers to take a little break in.

another highlight: riding the train. this is the best behaved i've ever seen my boys. i'm thinking of ditching our car and taking a train anywhere we need to go.

family pic

it was a busy morning but we all had fun, the weather was perfect and we really enjoyed the animals!

Primary program

Earlier this month our ward had the primary program, It was really great! I was a little nervous giving Brody an open mic in front of a crowd, but he did great! I thought i'd try to video the boys saying their parts each year so I can see them grow from year to year, so here's Brody:

*That little bit about it being Sunday wasn't actually part of his part, but more the sharing of information.

Pumpkin patch

Our ward's playgroup met at the pumpkin patch, so we joined in on the fun. I really like this pumpkin patch, we went a few weeks ago and had fun that time too! It's free, lots of white pumpkins (my fav) and a little farmstand with fresh veggies, jams, salsas and honeycrisp apples (by far the best type of apple ever.) I tried to get a cute little picture of the boys, and this was the result:

hmm, not so great. the older one should do better right?

I guess he thought the camera was off to the side!

Running around on the hay maze:

My favorite part of the morning was the twins on the bounce house slide, one word: hilarious!

T-swizzle

A couple weeks ago Taylor Swift came to cowboys stadium for the final stop of her speak now tour. We bought tickets back in january so I have been waiting for quite a while for this concert! I really enjoyed the show, she has alot of creative stuff going on and she sounded a little better live than I expected. But holy cow, there certainly were A LOT of screaming bedazzled tween girls!! I started to wonder if I was way off to think I was part of a target audience, but there were two men sitting in front of us, without any girls accompaning them, so I felt a little better about being there! Here's some pics from our night:

special guest B.O.B.

justin's way to "cope" with the evening, the espn mobile app

singing a ball gown

floating over the audience

In true Taylor fashion there was a lot of hair being whipped around, and running up and down the stage, and in true aging kim fashion I was really concerned she was going to get dizzy and pass out. Turns out she's young and perfectly fine moving all around for multiple hours!! She put on a great show and was definitely worth the wait!

Have a seat

You may be shocked by this, so are you sitting down? I actually got some crafts done!! The craftiness has been very few and very far between since a pair of guys showed up a few years ago, but it seems that if I plan a little better then I may actually find some opportunities to get some things done, I'm super excited! The other night I made this Halloween yarn wreath, which is definitely a simpler version than I've seen, but I figured I'd start with baby steps.

I promise the flowers are supposed to look wrinkled like that! And also, that's not my arm. Anywho, this is really, really easy to make, it just takes a really long time to wrap the yarn around the wreath, so I recommend having some good tv on to keep you going! Now sit tight, I'm already moving on to the next project...

I had seen this on eighteen25 and thought it was really cute, the letters were from hobby lobby, spray painted flat white and i modge podged paper onto the heart. I think for now I like how it turned out! It certainly helps to have a little more space to work on things! Now, hopefully the shock has worn off and next time no one will be caught off guard when I finish a project!

crewkade

yup, when there's two their names blend as one, especially when they're this similar:

i love watching crew and kade do their "twin thing" together, i can't imagine how fun it would be to have your best bud with you all the time! they obviously fight a lot, but i love when they rotate play with each other, luckily i got a little on video when we were playing at the museum:

of course i save the best for last. one day at lunch we were listening to a little jack johnson and crewkade decided to work out a few moves, i love this video!

twins are crazy, but i feel so lucky to watch these two become the best of buds!

seattle

i should preface the next couple days of post and say that this trip we took was AMAZING!! i think we all have a "travel bucket list" and this trip crossed a few of those goals off my list! i'm so grateful for justin's grandma who arranged for this family reunion, and for clarke and diane for making sure we had an amazing time in seattle! and i am especially grateful for my parents who braved the trenches with our little guys and truly learned first hand all the joys and choas brody, crew and kade are, seriously, thank you!! so... here's the trip:

we started out in seattle for a couple days and i LOVED downtown seattle, yes there's a LOT of bums, but the city is really fun, and it's beautiful!! here's some of our highlights, believe me, it's picture overload:
we stayed next to pike place market, lots of shops/restaurants/attractions, lots to walk around and see.

heading down to the market

so this is famous fish throwing market, very entertaining!

the gum wall, not surprisingly, totally grossed me out!!

we took a ferry boat ride to Bainbridge island, and everything about puget sound is gorgeous! the islands are covered in trees with houses popping out, and of course seattle's skyline is really pretty!

justin with a view of the seattle seahawk's stadium and the mariner's field.

view of space needle, i hope you enjoy my true windblown look!

did you get the sunglasses memo?

view of Bainbridge island

after the ferry ride we went to Experience Music Project museum, which was really interesting! justin by the cyclone of guitars, this thing was two stories tall!

the museum had a hall of historic guitars, a Jimi Hendrix feature and a Nirvana feature, which caught our attention. they had lots of memorabilia, smashed guiters and historical progress of the band, it was amazing! recognize kurt's sweater??

after the museum we crossed the way to the space needle, and up we went!

view from the top!

city view on one side

ocean view on the other!

out to dinner at ruth's chris, yum! seattle has delicious crab cakes, soo good!!

pretty much i LOVED seattle, it's beautiful, there's tons to do, and people were really friendly! we boarded the ship in seattle and to be honest i was sad to leave the downtown! it was gorgeous to watch seattle and all the other island go by, such a pretty place!

some skyline and mt. Rainier, i so underestimated the size of my Rainier, it's HUGE!! most of the time the peak's covered with clouds, and flying in our plane was flying about at the height of the top of the mountain, truly majestic!!

enjoying the view

sailing away, and excited for our next stops!!