i'm back....maybe

but this sure is a fantastic picture to come back with!!!

yep, i met him. and he was so nice and talked EXACTLY as he does on the show! my whole family loves this show, so they will all die when they see this! i love modern family and phil is by far my favorite character on it...followed closely by cam of course!

february was a blur...

it was such a crazy, busy month for our family! we attended lots of hockey games, started our new mother/daughter book club and planned lots of valentines celebrations! we had 4 extra days off this month, thanks to the snow, so we had many school parties scheduled, rescheduled and rescheduled again!

and as room mom for 2 of the 3 girls, that only means LOTS of baking for me!

for the original party we started with cute mini brownies, then adorable mini cupcakes for the rescheduled party, and finally ghetto store-bought cupcakes was all i could manage the 3rd time around! so who ate all the extra goodies around the house? me, of course! and i barely went to the gym this month...

scott and i had a fun getaway to dallas for the nba all-star weekend. (my parents came and watched the girls for us and my mom came fully-equipped with valentines books, treats and games. their days consisted of building forts, telling stories and going on treasure hunts!)

we stayed at a fabulous hotel, had AMAZING mexican food (we are both still dreaming about the queso at mi cucina), found a red mango (the best guilt-free treat around), saw a movie, watched a lot of olympics, and did some serious shopping at northpark mall. i always buy my own valentines present - scott did give me the sweetest card ever...but the rest is up to me....yea!! :)

all-star saturday night was at the arena - lots of fun! but the most amazing part was the all-star game at the new cowboys stadium (aka "jerry world") and IT IS AMAZING...almost surreal. the jumbotron screen was actually bigger than the basketball court itself - crazy!

what a fun getaway! possibly the highlight of the trip was flying home on a private jet...no security lines, custom meals and huge seats...i could get used to that! :)

unfortunately, it was short-lived as we came home to 7 electricians who had been in our house for 5 days straight getting all the old knob-and-tube out of the walls....not pretty and not cheap! needless to say, i am desperate for my painters to come in and repair all the many holes they put in the ceiling of almost every room.

the following day my oven went out...so off to buy a new oven. i'm afraid we may have bought the money pit. we love our house, but there is something HUGE and SERIOUS and EXPENSIVE...EVERY SINGLE MONTH!!!!!!!!!!!!

so it was a fun, busy month with LOTS and LOTS of snow. please tell me spring is right around the corner!

january clean-up!

january 2010 was spent completely purging our house. we only moved in over a year ago...and it was time to get rid of a little-actually a LOT- of stuff i have not only accumulated in the last year, but maybe should have gotten rid of before we moved.

one of my fondest memories of our move was renting a dumpster. i had 48 whole hours to put ANYTHING i wanted in there. (curiously, scott was away when i was inspired to look up "dumpsters" in the yellow pages and then rent one the following day...worth every penny by the way).

i literally went room-by-room, closet-by-closet and drawer-by-drawer looking for things to get rid of before our move. and did i ever fill that dumpster! i was up until 2am both nights taking loads of stuff out...arguably not all "garbage", but i was on a mission.

my girls were crushed to see their broken bike, collapsed barbie house and various other toys that didn't work just right. they even made numerous attempts to climb IN the dumpster and remove them!

so this past january i started to question why we had 4 booster seats, 2 extra car seats, an extra stroller, various unused tarps, extra carpet and endless amounts of sidewalk chalk all in our garage!

we got rid of all of that and also cleaned out our storage rooms...and even went through every holiday bin deciding what to keep for our family now and for my kids to inherit someday. (my 18 christmas bins are down to 12!) a good friend of ours asked during our move if i REALLY needed 8 black and orange bins for halloween. "what in the world do you have in all of these?" he asked, both astonished and confused. guess he didn't know me very well :)

anyone who knows me understands what a big task this is. like my own mom, i LOVE to decorate for any and every holiday. scott jokes that the only holidays we don't celebrate-and thus decorate for-are groundhog day and arbor day!

i sorted through toys, scrapbook supplies, party supplies, family home evening lessons, old young women lessons and handouts, MILLIONS of vhs tapes (why do i have reruns from 90210, the 2002 slc olympics and at LEAST 10 tapes containing various jazz games. stockton is my favorite athlete of all time, but what was i thinking???)

then there were the stamps from my old stamping days. i had 3 good-sized bins of stamps-most of which my sweet mother-in-law gave me-but those days are long gone. so i gave over half of them to eliza's nursery school and they were thrilled.

scott was such a good sport making at LEAST 10 runs to the dump, 10 trips to the red cross and a couple of drop-offs to the church nursery.

it was the perfect way to spend our saturdays in january!

seriously...a snow day?

we got a whopping 3 inches overnight...enough to shut down the gym, stores in town and cancel all rec basketball games. the forecast predicted 12-18" but of course it never seems to live up to the hype. i was at the grocery store yesterday afternoon to get some superbowl snacks, and people were literally STOCKPILING bread, milk and water!

it never ceases to amaze me how worked up people on the east coast get with the threat of snow...

granted, our cousins are buried in about 20 inches down in dc (very rare), but for the most part the often-predicted "noreaster" forecasts never seems to become a reality. the kids get all excited with visions of building a 4-foot snowman...becoming buried doing snow angels...building an igloo...their dreams are always shattered.

as a utah girl, i always tell my kids that in all my years, i only had one snow day...ONE!!! the only snow day we ever had was when i was in 4th or 5th grade and my dad and our neighbor keith got out the snowmobiles and drove us up to school, only to find it closed! i think my kids have at least 4-5 each year, with a few delayed openings as well.

the girls often go to bed with their pj's inside-out...hoping for a snow day! they also have taken to turning their pillowcases inside-out and sleeping with an ice cream scoop under their pillow (?)

we are truly hoping for a real storm at some point this winter.

i want to be snowed in!

christmas jars

every year for the past four years, our family has been saving extra change in a jar in our kitchen labeled "christmas jar". a few years back, i read the book "christmas jars" and we decided to start one of our own. each year we have set a goal to fill one more than the previous year. in 2009, we filled four jars! in the past we have taken the jars into the city and handed them out to homeless or needy people.

we counted the money and each jar holds approximately $90-$100! on christmas day we went into the city and handed out one jar. we still had three remaining jars (they are HEAVY, so we couldn't take four in at once!) scott sugggested we give them to help out in haiti. so last week, the girls and i headed over the red cross offices. the ladies there couldn't believe we were dropping off $300 in spare change! they took the girls picture with the jars for our local paper. i was so proud of the girls and they felt so good about what they did!

five jars may be a stretch this year, but we are going to try!

bath night

tonight i put all 3 girls in the shower together...so quick and easy...they never want to get in, but once they're in, they never want to get out! they brought their cd player in and turned it up LOUD...we love taylor swift around here...and eliza was in there singing and dancing and the next thing i knew she'd emptied my $30 conditioner and was rubbing it all over her...thinking it was the baby magic we'd just run out of i guess! i should have taken a picture it was so funny...she then proceeded to "eat" the neutrogena rainbath shower gel...and was blowing bubbles out of her mouth! it was too funny! the 3 of us couldn't stop laughing...she was laughing too, until she realized how gross it tasted! that girl is turning into a tornado again...she is so sweet and cute and hilarious, but is suddenly destructive again at 3 1/2! this is kira all over again...

brayton variety show

Every January, the school puts on a "variety show" or as one friend described it, "a celebration of mediocrity"...funny! No one was willing to chair the event (which made many moms happy!) but two women stepped in at the last minute...much to our disappointment. I am all for fun school activities, but this one seems to lead to lots of stress, lots of drama and lots and lots of practices. First, you must decide on a group (which seems to occur around october for some reason), then music, costumes and finally numerous lunchtime and after-school practices.

Alexa found her group and was dying to sing Taylor Swifts, "Last Christmas". Unfortunately, the four other girls didn't want this song and so they landed on "Magic" from Wizards of Waverly Place. The five girls choreographed it themselves (with some great direction from my good friend - the supervising parent), another creative mom made their adorable costumes (and dyed them the color of their choice!) and i supplied the magic wands.

Despite being act number 30 out of 35, it was a success! They looked so cute and sounded even better! Kira and Eliza sat mesmerized during the entire show (the lollipops, m&m's and 100-degree heat in the gym may have had something to do with it...) We missed Scott, who was at the Knicks/Lakers game. He insisted he just HAD to be there for clients. Hmmm...

Way to go Alexa!