The Best Night of Her Life

We had our ward Halloween party/Trunk-or-Treat last night. Peyton had the best night of her life. Let me preface this by saying that Peyton is a babywise baby. We have a pretty firm schedule, and it ends up working out great for both baby and mommy. So at 7 sharp every night, Peyton is in bed. Our party didn't start until 6:30, so already we had that going against us. Peyton found her favorite person in the world/babysitter Abbie and whined Abbie into feeding her dinner. And soda. Then she found her other favorite- Abbie's mom Lacie and suckered Lacie into getting her a piece of pie, which she finished. By herself. Seriously, she licked the bowl clean- and I'm not speaking figuratively. Then she found her way over to grandpa, who was busy giving her cousins all sorts of treats, so she had her fill with him. Then she went with her nursery leader to the cake walk, where she won a cupcake. I didn't know about this one until I saw her licking the (2" tall) frosting off the top. Luckily for me, she wasn't interested in the cake part, so she gave it to me to throw away. Then she meandered into the baby haunted house, which was really a room with some glowing pumpkins and balloons all over the floor. Oh yes, and a cauldron full of chocolate coins. Peyton came out of the haunted house (10 minutes later) with chocolate smeared all over her face. It was special. Last but not least, was the actual trunk-or-treat-ing. For anyone who doesn't know what that is, we all park our cars with the trunks facing the sidewalk and decorate the cars and the kids go around the circle of cars and get their candy. So Peyton took her little bag and walked around and collected way too much candy for her own good. We finally managed to get her loaded into the car at 9. She screamed when I took her candy bag away to load her into the car. Then she peed in her car seat. Apparently in all the excitement of the night, she forgot to go potty. So, it was an amazing night for us. When we were driving home, I asked her what her favorite thing we did all day was. I expected her to say the zoo (we had gone that morning) or the party. She said "cupcake!" Pretty cute. She had kind of a rough morning this morning. I think she was sugar-hungover. Tonight Jade and I went to a grown-up Halloween party at our friends' house. It was a white-trash bash and it was pretty hilarious. We had such a blast matching everyone with their most white trash moment and guessing the white trash trivia. Jade and I even won the prize for the best costumes. I'm not sure if that's a good thing or a sad thing. Good times.

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A couple Tink pictures to start us off. Tinky has a few favorite spots in the house: on the floor in front of the huge windows looking out to the front yard (waiting to see the neighbor's cat or bunny), on the floor in front of the big office window looking out to the side yard (waiting to see the neighbor's cat or dog), and on the stairs, where she can look out the big window to the street, and catch a few rays of sunshine on days when there is actually sun.Okay- I promise on everything I hold dear that this picture isn't staged. The baby was laying on the couch and Tink actually moved it over so she could cuddle with it.Last one.

Where's Waldo?Playdate at one of our favorite play places- Munchkin Playland.And there we are again...Here's an awesome shot of my little princess...She loved this costume. She hasn't seen Snow White, but she loved the shoes with a high heel and the pretty dress. Pretty much this picture speaks for itself.I'm blocking Jade's tattoo sleeve and he's not wearing his sweet flip flops, but you get the general idea.Can you see the refrigerator on the porch or the wagon and lawn mower in the bushes?

I took the picture before the ding-dong and ho-ho bowl and the bucket of KFC chicken came. Too bad.

It's Definitely Fall

Well, up in the Pacific Northwest, we had a spectacular first 3 weeks of October (which doesn't come close to making up for our joke of a summer, but I digress). We have been going to the park, to feed the ducks, to the golf course, basically trying to enjoy the sunshine while it was around. We've been going to Tiny Tutus and storytimes and the indoor playland when it's not so nice outside. We went to the pumpkin patch with the Janecks and then left because it was about 48 degrees, foggy (wet), and muddy. We've been making special Halloween treats and trying to get Peyton excited about Halloween. Which she is. In the beginning of October, Jade mentioned that we should all go pick out pumpkins for Family Home Evening one night. Well apparently Peyton put it on her calendar, because every time we went to the grocery store the next 3 weeks (4 times), she pointed to the pumpkins outside and said "mommy daddy take me to pick my pumpkin, please?" It was so sweet. Last Friday I had a Relief Society activity, so Jade and Peyton went on a date to the golf course (to see the baby deer, but they also saw horses, squirrels, a dog, and a muskrat!) and then to finally get a pumpkin for that little girl. She was so excited to show me her pumpkin that she picked with daddy the next morning. Holidays are so much more fun when you have a little person to share them with!

Peyton was testing Tink's patience one day. A necklace around her head, a baby doll on her tummy, and a blanket for her feet. Tink was a good sport. Later on, Tink decided the blanket wasn't so bad after all. She was literally holding the blanket between her 2 front paws, like a person.Football Season! We lent our bouncy chair to Peyton's baby cousin and when they returned it, Peyton was more excited about it then she ever was as an infant. She sat in it and played in it and put her dollies in it. It was very cute.

This was about as far as we got at the pumpkin patch: the entrance.Peyton, Peyton and Baby GwenPeyton can never resist a good cuddle with Tink, though she's not a big cuddler with us. Cute little Spooky outfit! At the Children's Museum Carving her prized pumpkin. Daddy and baby pumpkin.

I almost had a heart attack today

**Update: A few of my friends informed me that there is an option I never knew about (I'm still not very tech-savvy, which makes me a traitor to my generation). I can make my blog available only to people who have my actual blog address, not search-able through a search engine. So I did that a few days ago, and now our viewers are back to normal. I'm going to keep it like this for awhile and monitor things. We might not have to go private if it stays like this. Thanks to the gals who taught me about it!**

So, in my opinion, it is pretty smart to have your blog be private. I never privatized our blog for a couple reasons; I know we have friends and family who read it and I don't realize they're reading it (for example: some of my great aunts, Jade's second cousins, etc.) thereby making it impossible for me to allow everyone access to our blog if it was private. Also when your blog is private, it won't show updates in your friends' blog lists, so no one can tell when you've done a new post. Personally, I always found this supremely annoying, so I kept ours public. This morning I read one of my friend's blogs, and she helped me become aware of a neat feature that Google has added to Blogger. You fellow bloggers will be interested to hear about this. In my Dashboard, there is a new button called "Stats". This tab allows me to see where my blog viewers are coming from (for example from another friend's blog, or typing in our blog address in Google, etc). It allows me to see what countries people are viewing my blog in, and which pages people have been viewing. It tells me what people have typed into a search engine to get to my blog. It was so fun to see that our friends in Canada checked our blog today, a couple of my friends who also have blogs checked our blog today, and it was fun to see that someone got to our blog by Google-ing me (I have never thought of myself as Google-worthy).

If you want to be scared, I mean really, truly scared, look at your "Stats" tab. For example, I have no idea why people in Turkey, Russia, New Zealand, or someone in Kazakhstan has looked at my blog 5 times in the last 24 hours. It was also enlightening to see what searches have brought people to our blog this week. One person arrived at our blog because they searched "edward cullien [typo obviously] aston martin", which was probably disappointing for them, but kind of funny to me. But I feel disgusted and violated knowing that someone came to my blog from Google with the search "she likes potty naked" and "potty she's naked again". I am sick about it. I had never thought that writing about potty training my child would be turned into something so disturbing for me. I don't think that those searches were meant to find us, because it wasn't a search for a child or anything child-related, but to think that someone who obviously has serious issues can come across our blog and read in detail about the last 3 1/2 years of our life, is incredibly disturbing.

So obviously now our family blog will be private. It is unfortunate that it has to be like this, because I know that this will make it harder for our loved ones to check up on us, but I feel there is no other option for us. I am only grateful that I came across this now, and not after something or someone harmed me or my family. If you would like to be allowed access to our blog when it becomes privatized, please email, Facebook, text or call me and give me your email address. You can also leave it as a comment in our comments section, and I will erase your email address right after I get it.

Peyton Funnies

She has a killer memory (she doesn't get that from me. Maybe from her Uncle Jimmy). She remembers things from 3-4 months ago (especially injuries and birthday parties or the last time she wore a certain article of clothing).

Wanted Noni to sing "bears" instead of "monkeys" in the song "5 Little Monkeys Swinging From the Tree." I guess she thought monkeys are too sweet to let them get snapped by alligators. She's her mother's daughter.

When we went to pick my mom up from the airport, Peyton developed some sort of cough. It started off mild- she would just stop walking to cough. It got progressively more dramatic. By the time we got to the parking garage, she would stop, bend over (hands touching the ground), and cough- about every 10 steps. We tried so hard not to laugh (therefore reinforcing the fake cough), but it was so funny. How did she even come up with that?

We were playing outside on our deck (well, Peyton was playing and I was reading). I let Peyton turn on the hose and play in the water. I didn't realize she had squirted the slide with water, but she tried to go down her slide; and she was wet and the slide was wet... She shot off that thing about 50 mph.

She also started doing this weird thing while she walked- shrugging her shoulders up and down when she took each step. It was pretty cute, though I was really nervous it would become some sort of tick. Luckily she stopped doing it after the novelty wore off a couple days later.

She loves taking baths in the sink, and every day (usually several times a day), she will ask for "bath sink"!

When she is saying something and I can't understand her, she gets pretty frustrated. Then she starts talking really slow to me- as if I'm dense.

My mom and I were feeding Peyton and she asked me where Roxy was. I started to answer her "Roxy..." and then I got distracted and trailed off. She got annoyed and tried to help me find my words- she said "is..." It was very cute.

When she was doing swimming lessons in Las Vegas, she didn't really love it for the first few lessons. She would do everything her teacher Miss Melinda asked her to do, but after every exercise, she would ask "time for clean-up now?"

In Las Vegas, we were sitting by the computer and Peyton was playing with Noni's wallet. She pulled out a credit card and said "charge card!" I think I might take her shopping too much.

Last but not least... Peyton started dance classes today!! They are called "Tiny Tutus" It doesn't get much cuter than that!

Las Vegas = Love

Well, we're back from our amazing trip to Las Vegas. Every time I leave there I cry. It's just my home- it feels like part of me. Not to mention the weather is approximately 100x better there than in Oregon. Though I do love it here. And I am excited to be back. Our trip was so great. It was in the 90's and low 100's the whole week (with the exception of our last day there- it was in the 80's and it rained!! I absolutely love the warm Vegas rain!). My mom heated up her pool to 85 degrees and we went swimming every single day. And I laid out and read books just about every afternoon while Peyton was taking her nap. Heaven. We got to spend time with my grandpas "Papa Gene!" and "Papa Coy!" Peyton sure loves those guys. She does all her best tricks to try and show off for them. My cousin Jamie was there most of our trip, and it was great to see her. I got to see my Stilettos (except Brittany) and some of my other friends. We went to Cheyanne's open house for her high school. She goes to a performing arts high school, so it was especially cool to see the different groups perform. I'm so excited for her! Peyton loved playing with Uncle Jimmy and his Kitty Rizzo. She would ask for them 5 times a day. Peyton took swim lessons at my mom's house with Miss Melinda, and I am so excited to say that she knows how to swim now! We'll have to keep practicing in Oregon at our Athletic Club, but she did so well with her swimming lessons! Jade and Tinky stopped by on their way from Southern Utah to Northern Nevada for the weekend. We went to Jade's all-time favorite "most authentic" Churrascaria, Texas de Brazil. My mom and Jamie and I went out with some of my mom's friends to celebrate a birthday one night, and saw 2 movies back to back. We all had a blast, and it was really, really hard to leave on Saturday. Seriously. I wanted to stay another week (or indefinitely).
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Swim lessons!
They teach kids under 5-6 the underwater swim, not the breast-stroke, because little kids don't have the coordination to reach and pull. Peyton got so good at holding her breath and doing her "ice cream scoops" with her arms and kicking her feet.She was going under to grab toysPeyton wasn't feeling great for a couple days, so she did a lot of cuddling on the couch and watching "daddy on TV"- aka my wedding video.

Uncle Chaz drove down from Utah for the weekend with our friend Alyssa. Peyton was very happy to see him.

We went on a park playdate with our good friend Suzanne "Bootie wedding planner"/my mom's interior design partner, and her two little angels, Elle and Liam. Peyton felt like a very big girl around them, and was eager to "help" whenever she could.

Part of Jade's business trip was through Idaho, so he made a pit stop at Jerai and Phil's place. Tinky and Remy were SO happy to be together again.

Tinky fell asleep in some very interesting positions while she and Jade were driving.

We've been around...

Nothing too exciting has been going on around here. We've just been keeping busy, trying to suck every last bit of summer we can out of Oregon. We got gypped, by the way, as far as summers go. Even by Oregon standards. All I have to say about that is- I hope we have a dang good fall. So anyway, here's what we've been up to...

Going to the park (when weather permits)Leaving the park, Peyton decided she needed to go potty. Brittney and I were just walking down the sidewalk, and all of a sudden Peyton was in the grass 10 feet behind us, her pants pulled down, and squatting.I have no idea where she picked that one up.Peyton is still into shoes and purses. She entertains herself very well with them while I get ready.Going to OMSIThose two girls are so cute together.Every time Peyton sees a camera she stops what she's doing and yells "Cheese!" We went to a soapbox derby (or whatever those things are called)

in JaNea's neighborhood. The kids had a blast racing, and the toddlers loved the car grandpa made.At the raceGoing shopping (obviously).