O Christmas Tree

Ha ha, yeah, that's a super close up picture of our fake Christmas tree above :) Anyways, we had an AWESOME Thanksgiving, and now we can officially get into the Christmas spirit! ( ok, I admit it, we did put everything up the day BEFORE Thanksgiving). A few days ago I started by making some fun Christmas ornaments, that smell super good for the tree. The recipe basically just said mix 3 cups of Cinnamon with 3 cups of applesauce. Roll it out on the counter, and cut with a cookie cutter, then let dry for a few days. In the reviews there were many people saying the dough was too moist, so I thought I'd better add the applesauce carefully. I ended up accidently just pouring the whole pound of cinnamon in (close to 3 cups anyways). Then put applesauce in until I liked the consistency. After making these, my hands and house had the wonderful aroma of cinnamon for a couple days!
Instead of drying on the counter, I read you could also bake them. So I baked them at 250 degrees for a couple hours. After about an hour I transfered them straight on the rack so all of the sides could get some air.
I'm going to have Isaac paint a couple of them for fun, but haven't gotten around to that yet. For now it's probably good for them to hang and get fully dried out.

Meanwhile this cute little boy really wanted to grab that table! He's getting so fun! With a pants-less Isaac standing in the background.

I think this is the first time in my life I've had Christmas stuff up this early, so we'll see if I get sick of it before Christmas comes or not! This is our first year with our own full size Christmas tree, so I was just too excited to get it up and decorated :)

Scared

So, first off- we officially have the internet at our house!!! This is thanks to an early Christmas present from my parents- thanks Mom and Dad! It's amazing how wonderful it is. Living without something brings on a whole new level of appreciation when you get it back again. I can also say that I appreciate having a dishwasher, washer and dryer more then I ever would have had I not had those my first 2 years of marriage. And one day, I know that I will be grateful and appreciative of having a car in the same way as well. This time of year brings on thoughts and feelings of gratitude, and we truly have so much to be grateful for. It can be so easy at times to focus on things that we don't have- but having this attitude only brings sadness. The lord has blessed us with SO much! Focusing on that is the way to bring love and happiness into your life. Sometimes I am amazed at what we DO have with how poor we are. It is a testament that Heavenly Father is truly watching out for us. I could name off a million things that I am grateful for, and blessings that we have- but that's not what I even came here to blog about. I got a little sidetracked :)

What I originally started this post for was to write about our experiences last night. Last night we put Isaac to bed as usual- and he fell asleep good and easy as usual. After about an hour, we hear Isaac screaming and totally freaked out in his room. Brad walked in to find him huddled in the corner of his bed, trying to get away from his blankets. After calming him down, we finally got out of him that he thought there was a kitty cat in his blankets. And there was NO way he was going to sleep in them. So Brad tried changing to different blankets. At first Isaac thought this was a good idea, until we left him alone in his room. Pretty soon we hear the panicked screaming again. When I went in there, he was acting like he needed to go to the bathroom as he screamed, so I asked him if he needed to go potty. After I helped him go pee, he insisted that he wanted to sit on the toilet and poop. By this time I was exhausted and said, fine, just let me know when you are done, and I left him on the toilet while I crawled back in bed. After about a 15 minutes I could hear him in there still, so I got up. He was still just sitting on the toilet, no poop in the toilet, just hanging out. I knew he was just trying to stall going to bed, and he really didn't need to poop, so I told him that he's all done, and its time to go to sleep. At this he truly started to FREAK out. I had to tear him off the toilet, hold him down to get his clothes back on, and pick him up to take him back to his room. All this time he was screaming yelling in a devilish voice "ME POOO POOO ME POOO POO". (keep in mind he never poops in the toilet. he still prefers his diaper) I don't know how Luke slept through it all. So I took him to his room and tried to calm him down by rocking him in his rocking chair like a baby, and singing to him. He kept on crying, but finally relaxed his body. After a few songs, when the crying had all but stopped, I said it's time to go to sleep. (It was like 11:00 pm by this point) He convinced me that if I read him one story he'd go to sleep. So I did. When the story was over, he still was scared to death of his bed. So I asked him if he'd sleep on Mommy's floor. He said he wanted to sleep on his floor. So I made a little bed on the floor for him and that's how he slept. I really wonder what in the world kind of nightmare he had to be SO scared of his bed. I just put him down for a nap, and he still refuses to get in his bed to sleep. I showed him that there is nothing in his bed, and told him all the kitty cats are outside. They don't come in. But he still insists on a floor bed. Hopefully this doesn't last too long! We'll see how many nights he'll spend on the floor until he gets over it. Does anybody have any suggestions on how to deal with nightmares?

MARRIAGE!!

HOORAY! Brad's sister Brittany got married to Bagi Dash Tu Dev. It was an awesome wedding, the ceremony was super cool, thanks to Bagi's family being from Mongolian. They brought their culture and performed a beautiful tradition we got to witness. I totally want to learn Mongolian now. Too bad I have to learn about antidepressants instead back at school. And what could be better than having the wedding end with a beautiful light snowfall. So I got my snow for the year, and now it's already time to go back to Texas.

Brittany creamed his face with cake. Here you can almost see his neck being dislocated!

And here we see Luke getting snowed on. I think he's very ready to back to Houston.

We love you Utah! It was good seeing you. Hope you all miss us immensely until the next time you see us!

27

Brad is now older. He's 27. Only three more years until youth completely dies away and all that's left will be oldness.
Amy wins with the best birthday present. She made a treasure hunt complete with riddles (some I couldn't solve!) and rhymes even! The treasure turned out to be birthday cards from parents and grandparents, and presents galore! Luke gave me a smile, that was the second best present. Isaac ate chinese food for me, that was the 3rd best present. I really appreciated the wonderful birthday cards and books sent from both my grandparents and parents and siblings. My optometry class was AMAZING and making me feel awesome, I got like 100 sincere "happy birthday brad!!!"'s I felt great all day (even though I was dilated and had hours and hours of class)
Life is Good.

Happy Halloween!

We did some AWESOME Pumpkin carving right after Church on Sunday. It was the only time we really spent together. Even though it's a sacrifice, I've LOVED being strict in keeping homework away from the Sabbath day. My grades might suffer sometimes, but since my family suffers Monday-Saturday, it's good to have me home to help out at least one day a week!

I (BRAD) did the Rango Chemilion face pumpkin, and Amy did the happy face one. And then On the back of my I wrote the name of the dreadful Test that I took on Halloween morning.. Pharmacology! Ew.

Isaac was a Train Conductor, thanks to the Smiths who donated the costume to us!!!!!

Luke was a cute 'lil Pumpkin! It was Isaac's costume from 2 years ago. LUKE DIDN'T FIT INTO IT! He's 1 month younger than Isaac was when he wore it too. Luke is our Big Baby!

Isaac didn't like how the Witch's Brew burned his mouth... He didn't realize that it was just "bubble juice." what we call normal carbonated root beer.


Oh and I asked Amy what she was... She said, "A Mexican!" I told her that if anyone asks, she should refer to herself as a Mariachi Girl... ya know, it's a little less politically incorrect.

We went to a triple ward's Fall Festival where tons of kids dressed up. Isaac LOVED seeing the Princesses and the Snow Whites, and there was even a Simba there! However there was one werewolf kid that really scared Isaac and tried to chase him.




Since my halloween weekend was spent studying for Pharm, I didn't have any time to make a costume better than Jim Halpert. A Character from "The Office" who dressed up as Facebook.

Test Week is OVER! I can now come home and see my kids for half an hour before they go to sleep. I think that for the last 2 and a half weeks I've been leaving the house at 5:50 am and not coming home from school till 10pm. If anyone's considering Optometry school... think again. It's not any easier than Med School I'm sorry!

Life is good now. We can eat Isaac's candy. He got TONS of it. On Halloween night, I stayed home giving candy to trick or treaters (It's against our religion to turn off the porch lights and deny children candy. Look it up, it's in the Bible.) That was fun, especially the part about me sitting down and not studying and casually watching a halloween movie. Amy went with her friend Joneal and the kids to go trick or treating around the best neighborhoods. Apparently the old bishop of the ward has a really fun halloween tradition that Amy got to watch. He dumps gasoline all over the street and lights it on FIRE!!!! That's So Awesome. I'm going to do that too! Maybe for my birthday! (Which is in a week or so!)

Love you all BYE

Day At The Park

And Lately Luke has taken to yelling. I think he just likes to listen to his own voice...

Science Center

A few days ago, we were introduced to the Science Center. A friend that had grown up in Houston had gone there as a child, and thought it'd be fun to go back with our kids. The best part about it is its FREE! :) It mostly consisted of animals that have been taxidermed (I don't think that's a real word). We had the whole place to ourselves, so I don't think many people know about it. It seems to mostly exist for schools to visit.

It was really fun to see so many animals up close and personal though. When you go to the zoo, you have to fight crowds of people, and hope that the animal is by the front of the cage. Here, they were just right there for you to look at. The coolest animals they had was a buffalo, and polar bear, a black bear, tigers, leopards, cheetahs, and a lion. There were many more as well. I took just a couple pictures....

Isaac with the crocodile

When Isaac saw this one he said, "lion get bambi?"

The first animal we saw was a wolverine

Oh, and as far as an update on our poo post. Isaac is improving! He still is not completely normal I'd say, but he's getting there. I broke down and went and got some Miralax from Walmart, and I think that seems to help a lot. I gave it to him 3 days in a row a week ago, and he seems to be semi-normal since then.

We also have had the opportunity to come visit Utah! Wee Wee (Stephanie) came and visited us in Houston, and it's been a blast. She's been so much help with the kids, and keeping me company while Brad's been busy doing his test week at school. We then got some buddy passes to go home with her. Things didn't work out perfectly, but we got here. We were going to leave on Friday and get in Utah on time for my grandpa's memorial, but the flight was delayed enough that we would've missed our connection. So the next day we planned on driving to Austin, and flying through Long Beach instead. All of a sudden people bought lots of tickets, and it looked like we might not be able to get on that flight either. Thanks to Tracy and Valerie for spending all of Saturday flying out and getting us. Since Valerie has a higher priority, we were able to get on ahead of the other buddy passes, and we made it! We got here late Saturday night. We did miss the memorial, but at least got to see a little bit of family before they left. We'll be here a week maybe 2, so if anyone is looking for something to do, you should come visit us! :) Sadly we had to leave Brad behind to go to school and take some icky tests. It's hard not to have him with us, but it is fun to see family and friends some more.