While the cat's away the mice will play!

Actually...I haven't been THAT bad while Chris has been out of the country...but I have had some sort of weird burst of energy and I just have ALL of these things that I want to do!

A few days ago I decided that I needed to Spring Clean my house! I call it Spring Cleaning because I am fairly confident that by the time I get DONE it will be Spring if not Summer! I'm kind of a slow cleaner, and Bubby doesn't make cleaning very easy on top of being slow. :)

I Spring Cleaned my bedroom and also my bathroom. I am also doing a 21 day challenge with my sisters to "Get Organized". So on top of Spring Cleaning, I am also dumping drawers and cupboards and trying to get on top of my mess!

I've given myself a "timeline" of sorts. I have a "job" that I tell myself has to be done "sometime" today! It may be done by noon...it may be done by 11:30 p.m. but it HAS to be done by that day. That way if Bubby is just too lonely and needs me for a couple of hours, I can still play with him and not feel too "guilty".

Today's "job" was walls and baseboards upstairs. It's amazing how GROSS your walls get, and how much BETTER I feel having them cleaned! They need painted terribly, but that's another project and another story. For right now...they are clean! Part of washing the walls and baseboards included the stairway. Probably the worst part of all!

Some of you may remember that my stairway has three very precisely cut holes in my wall. These holes have been there for MONTHS and I HATE them! Chris has been really busy with work, and really doesn't have much "free" time. In the time that he DOES have, he has been working down in the basement, so I try not to harp too much on the holes in the wall...but I really do hate them!



If you DON'T remember how this all came to be, you can go read the story HERE. It's a good story if you need a good laugh!

So I came up with a plan to "fix" them. I have this little black end table in my kitchen that I love, but it kind of gets pushed in the corner and filled up with junk. My friend Susan has the cutest little table on her stairway landing that I have always thought was so fun! So I decided to take my little table and move it up to the stairway landing.

That covered up ONE of the holes... :) The other two I had to get more creative with. I found these two artist canvas' at Walmart and some really cute fabric and decided to make some wall hangings.





I've seen tutorials on these little wall hangings, and they always looked super easy and fun to make. So I decided to make some.

I just hot glued the fabric onto the back of the canvas



and then just kind of wrapped the fabric like you would a present.



This was the final outcome:



Then I hung them on the wall, and Viola...the holes are fixed!!



Bubby came up the stairs and said "Oh Lookie that Mommy! I like it!" So at least he liked it. LOL

I texted a picture of it to Chris and he wasn't as impressed. In fact his reply to me was "It's very interesting....maybe this will be my motivation to fix it!" Well...Rude, but if that really is true, then I guess...mission accomplished! :)

"A Chompie Pampis?"

Oh this little boy of mine! He truly makes the days exciting, and funny!

Tonight when I went to change his diaper aka "Pampis" as he likes to call it, he insisted that CHOMPIE get his pampis changed also!

If there is one thing I have learned in the 2 1/2 years that I have been privileged to have this little monkey in my life, it's that you learn to pick your battles with him! I knew that the battle between him and I would be much worse than the battle between Chompie and I, so I did as he asked and put a diaper on the poor dog.





Poor Chompie. He's such a good sport! He only struggled a little bit, but then he let me put a diaper on him, and in turn Bubby let me put one on him. Win-Win, well except for poor Chompie, who very OBVIOUSLY lost! :)

The "Foo Game"

No one but Chris and I will probably find this post funny, but I had to write this down so I wouldn't forget it!

A few weeks ago I was out doing some Christmas shopping and I had Keric with me. We were in Old Navy and I could tell he was getting upset with the time it was taking me to find things. He was getting restless, and I was trying to hurry. He found a huge gumball machine that had all sorts of different prizes in it, and he insisted that he have a "coin" to buy a prize. By this time I was willing to do WHATEVER would make him happy for 10 more mins. So I gave him a quarter and we watched the little yellow container come down the clear plastic spiral with the mystery prize inside! Keric quickly opened the container and out popped this big huge plastic dice!

My immediate reaction was "What a waste of 25 cents", but he was thrilled with his dice! He threw it ALL over the store, and had a great time finding it in all sorts of great hiding places. After we left Old Navy I kind of forgot about the obnoxious big dice, but Keric didn't!

He had put it in his pocket, and played with it for several days! Maybe it wasn't such a wasted 25 cents after all? A few days later, he wanted me to play a game with him and his dice. This was a game that he had either made up, or one he had played with Chris or one of the kids, I don't know, but he was very specific in what I was to do to play this game.

I stood on one end of our kitchen table, and he stood at the other end, and we threw the dice back and forth, back and forth! I promise we have NEVER taken him to Vegas, or Wendover for that matter and let him play craps! Anyway...I did this for probably 10 mins, and I could tell that this game could possibly go on for HOURS if I let it. I being the wonderful mother that I am, told him that I had things to do, and didn't have time to play his "foo game" anymore.

Now why I chose to call it a "Foo game" I don't really know, but I did. He cried and asked me to "Peas pay Foo Game!" and so I played for another little bit.

For days after he would lose his dice and ask me "Where Foo Game go?" It took me awhile to figure out what he was even talking about! Thankfully I realized it was the dice he was looking for, and together we would go searching for "Foo Game".

Well I don't know where the dice has since gone, He hasn't asked for it and I haven't seen it for awhile. I kind of forgot about it until this morning.

This morning while we were getting ready for church Keric came bringing in a game of "Yahtzee" and announced that he had found the "Foo Game!" He was so excited about the foo game and wanted me to open it immediately. I had to explain to him that we had to get ready to go to Nursery, so we didn't have time to play the foo game, but we would play it later.

He then sat on the floor and looked at the picture and proudly counted out 5 "foo's", 1 cup, and 8 "coins".

Oh this little boy makes me laugh so hard some days I think I will pee my pants! I suppose one day I should tell him that they are called "DICE" but somehow "Mommy I play Dice Game?" just doesn't sound as funny as "Mommy I play Foo Game?"

For the record...after Keric asked at least 50 times, we DID play the "Foo Game" tonight, and MOMMY won! YEA!!!

Writers Block....

It seems like things happen so fast, and that with facebook, scrapbooking and two blogs, I feel like I just repeat myself, and well...no one wants to hear me ramble on again.

Fast forward to the end of the year, and I haven't written anything here since OCTOBER!!!! Chris is good about reminding me of this on a rather frequent basis, but well...see above paragraph. :)

In all honesty, I DID post a layout a day in November on my 365 blog, so it hasn't REALLY been since October. :)

December seems to have been a total whirlwind! For whatever reason I feel like I have been running around like a chicken with my head cut off this whole month!

We did have lots of fun though...and even though I feel like it went by like a whirlwind, and my house SHOWS it, it was a great month! :)

So...instead of trying to catch up on an entire month, and bore you all with my long-windiness, I'll just post some pictures of our crazy month!

Hope you all had a wonderful Holiday Season and a WONDERFUL New Year! Bring on 2011!!


Decorating the Tree


Christmas Cards



Making Reindeer Cupcakes for the Ward Party


Lots of Hot Chocolate Nights!



Made Cake Balls for the first time for Neighbor Gifts



Lights at Temple Square with Mama Anne & Matt, Denise, Jack, Anna & Baby Porter.


All Ready for the long trip to Grandma and Grandpa Bennion's!


Of COURSE we played Rock Band at Grandmas!!


A visit from Santa at Grandma Bennion's House



Ice-Skating on Christmas Eve with all the Bennion Cousins



Dreaming of Sugar Plums...well most likely M&M's...while Santa was busy at work


All the cousins waiting at the top of the stairs for the "GO!" from Grandpa. :)


Opening Presents


SO EARLY in the morning! Back in the car on our way home. Good thing we have "games" to play. Thanks Santa!




We left so early in the morning, that we didn't realize we had left poor Puppy behind still sleeping!!! We only noticed when Keric started asking for him...and neither of us had packed him! :( Thankfully Grandma Bennion found Puppy safely sleeping in Keric's bed, and sent him back home. It was a rough few days without Puppy...but we were SO GLAD to have him home again! Thanks Grandma!! Especially for the left over Tootsie Rolls that Puppy didn't eat on his trip! ;)


Happy New Year! Hope 2011 Brings many more wonderful adventures, and a few more blog posts! ;)