Smashing eggshells

Peyton's new favorite activity...... smashing egg shells. I got this idea YET again from Pinterest. You just wash out the egg shells with soap adn water, let em' dry and WAH LA! Peyton was a little confused at first because he's always trying to grab the eggs and "help" when I'm cooking breakfast and I move them out of reach but here I was giving him a whole bowl of shells on purpose. He got the hang of it quick though.... he loved smashing them! This kid goes till he drops. At the end of the day, if there's any blanket lying around, he'll grab it and just hunker down for the night (kitchen, living room, bathroom, wherever he wants).

Peyton has a new fear folks. There we were.... a couple minutes after going to the grocery store..... I was in the kitchen putting some groceries away and filling the sink to do a load of dishes when all of a sudden, Peyton lets out a blood-curdling scream!!!! I'm pretty darn good at discerning between his cries and his screams and what they mean and I'm telling you.... I know this scream meant that he was super scared. He runs into the kitchen..... when he'd gotten done screaming I kept asking him what was wrong. "Did you see a bug?" "Did you hear a scary noise?" "Did you think momma left you?" To all my questions he let out a long, loud GROWWWLLLL! He kept pointing to the living room and growling over and over. So I went to see what was so scary.... and I'm telling you, no wonder he was scared.... I became a little scared myself.....
HaHa!! A bear, right in our own living room! Man, I cracked up.... I had to go hide it so he'd quit screaming and growling.



Now on to the braggin section of my post for the day....... I'm telling you... I'm a super mom/super wife lately! I've been on this super big cooking spree/cleaning the house till it shines/doing fun stuff with peyton spree! It's been awesome!!! I've made some darn good things for dinner lately.... all thanks to Pinterest. And a couple days ago I made caramel flan. Holy toledo right? Yeah, be impressed! That same evening we all made cookies as a family (which always turns into a "tornado hit the kitchen" type of thing because Eric's involved) but it was really fun and I'm glad we did it. We frosted them in honor of st. patty's day this month as well.

Maybe I'm so impressed with myself because I just am reminiscing about where and what I was doing when pregnant with Peyton. What a world of difference. We lived in Maryland at the time, and I found out I was pregnant a month before I finished beauty school. I already had a job lined up for me at a high end, fancy salon and ended up not working there after all. You see, no matter what salon I started at, it's a place that they expect you to take a month maternity leave and come back to work. Well, I had no plans to return to work as I'd been planning on being a stay at home mom. So all salons were out of the question. I knew I needed something to keep me busy for the 9 months so I applied to several different places looking for work. You name it, I applied. From McDonald's to Kohl's and everywhere in between..... but no one was hiring. I couldn't get a job anywhere. So I was a stay at home mom, even before the baby came. I had nothing to do and so I did what I could to entertain myself.
On a personal note, I was suffering from anxiety/depression. I just remember sleeping in every day till late morning..... not even wanting to get out of bed. Every day was the same, I'd watch a movies all day or read books. I had no desire or energy to do anything else. My poor husband..... I didn't cook, or clean. I'd do it occasionally on a "good day." But for the most part, he did it all. At this time, we didn't know I had depression.... I thought that pregnancy was just making me super tired and lethargic. I'll prolly write a whole post later on this whole depression stuff because it really is quite a story but to sum it up right now..... day in and day out I'd lay and sit around.

And that my friends is why I feel like I'm super mommy!

What we've been up to lately

We've had some fun times lately!! Plus some other scary stuff........ I've been having "issues" with this pregnancy. First I kept cramping ALL the time which ended up being, I was super dehydrated and the cramping was the body's way of trying to expel whatever was taking up my water source. YIKES! So, now I'm drinking glass of water after glass of water...... and peeing after peeing. Yup, unfortunatley they go hand in hand. I've had a couple other scares but fortunately everything is GREAT with my little baby girl!!! We're soooooo excited to meet her in May!!!

The other night, we went to a ward chili cook-off competition. That was really fun...... even though we got there super late. The chili was delish!!! I just love our ward.... they're a blast! And the event was western wear!! YESSS! Don't even worry about it, we were decked out. I don't have a picture of the whole fam but I sure took one of Peyton...... he was stinkin' cute!

Isn't that the cutest!! Boots, vest, hat..... ADORABLE!! And going to events like this realllllllyyy tire Peyton AND Eric out. They sat down on the couch when we got home and they were out.......
Yes, that's adorable too! I feel like I'm always waking these two up to go to bed in teh first place..... maybe we should just try an earlier bedtime. HA ha. Peyton and I also did another cool idea from Pinterest the other day. I would link it, but I'm not very technologically updated so I have no idea how. But what we did.... you get a gallon ziplock baggie and fill it with hair gel.... you're then supposed to add food coloring and glitter but I already had a bunch of blue hair gel. With the baggie, you seal it up and can write on the outside.... learning letters and shapes. Well, it didn't quite get written on.... Peyton just squished that bag all up.... throwing it on the floor and table over adn over.

And it's been super nice weather around here lately! WOW, like super good weather! So, we've been trying to hang outside as much as possible! Eric taught Peyton how to play catch today..... too bad they didn't change locations for the game. Everytime the ball dropped, Eric ended up having to wipe the ball off with a bunch of straw from having landed in a pile of manure. Yup, we were by the calf barns and Eric took a break to play catch in between mucking out all the stalls. Hey, wherever we can get extra time with Eric, we'll take it. Nothing a little hand sanitizer didn't fix!

That's a little bit of what we've been up to lately!!! Love my little family!

Peyton is such a little Eric... holy toledo! I swear he looks more like him day by day. Not only does he look like Eric, but he wants to be just like him. When Eric gets in from the barn at the end of day, Peyton will put on Eric's shoes. He loves to look at all of his cow magazines...... Peyton will just sit there forever looking at all the cows. His all time favorite thing to do to be like his daddy is to sit at the computer desk with a pen and checkbook in hand and "writes out all his checks." HA ha, it's sooooo cute! We've gotten to a point that Eric will come in to do finances though and he'll get frazzled because all of his stuff from his desk are not in the right places. So we've now rearranged our whole bedroom and "the office" space is now boxed out with our bed so Peyton can't get back there. Peyton wasn't too thrilled with the new arrangement.

The other night I went to a jewelry party at a girlfriend's house and it was great to be able to take Peyton out in his stroller to help daddy finish up the chores so I could go. Peyton loves to go out in the barns with Eric. This week, when I left..... Peyton sat in his stroller for a whole 45 minutes just watching Eric work till he was done. That is a LONG time for him!!!!

Peyton LOVES his daddy!!!!!!!!!

Valentines/Anniversary Fun!

So, I lOVE LOve LOVEEEE Valentine's Day! Alright, I love every holiday but I really do love Valentine's DAy....... mostly because it's also our Anniversary. Not our first anniversary but it's the anniversary we make the biggest deal out of now. We actually were married on June 13th...... Eric had been baptized that February so we weren't able to go through the temple yet so we decided to get married civilly first and the following February (a year after his baptism) we were sealed in the Salt Lake temple for time and all eternity!!! What a wonderful man I have!!!! I'm so blessed and feel grateful everyday for him(ok, almost everyday...... haha)!! No, but really, he's awesome!!! So for this year's anniversary/Valentine's Day Eric gave me an AWESOME gift! Like, awesome awesome awesome awesome gift!!! A friend of ours from our old ward were getting rid of their piano. Now, I've wanted a piano soooooooo badly ever since we were married. And we technically had a piano that came with our old house in Maryland, but it was bloooooomin' old and we had tried getting it tuned professionally and the tuners told us that it was pretty much impossible without replacing lots of parts inside. Blahhhh! So, like I said, I wanted a piano sooooooo badly!!! Well, he bought me a baby grand from our friends in maryland. It was a pretty darn good deal, $200!!!!!!!!!!! For a BABY GRAND!!!! It's gorgeous!!! So that was my gift!!!

Aint's she a beauty!!!! Well for the day itself...... we decided to go to our all time favorite restaurant, a Chinese buffet near our house!!! And of course we brought along our side-kick, Peyton. Romantic huh? Yup I know.....

So here he is chowing down on the deliciousness! Let me tell you, it's not just Eric's or my favorite restaurant............ Peyton LOVES it! It's not pictured here but he had a giant plate full of chicken nuggets (chinese food?) and those puffy chinese donuts..... oh and fries!! He ate and ate and ate and ate....... finally 20 minutes after Eric and I had finished our meals, Peyton handed us his plate (his way of showing us when he's done with his meal). We laughed and laughed about it.... wondering where the heck all the food was going in his little body. And his favorite food there was the egg drop soup.... I kid you not..... TWO bowls for this little man.

There's me in all my chubby preggo glory!!! Wish I could say that I don't use the excuse that when I'm pregnant I can eat everything and anything i want to.... but I totally do. And I'm not gonna lie...... I really enjoy it. I probably consumed 10,000 calories that night.... uh huh! Be impressed! There's "the hottness," himself. Yeah he loads up on seafood at this place!!! Too bad the smell of that stuff, let alone the taste makes me sick when i'm "with child." So kissing wasn't over-abundant until after he took a toothbrush to that mouth of his.

Man, I love these two sooooo much...... it almost hurts!!

There were only two people besides us in the restaurant at the same time so we got lots of special attention from the workers. This place usually isn't crowded.... and the owners have their little 8 year old boys wait the tables adn stuff..... it's sooo small town! love it!! Well, the mom/lady/owner was asking me when I was due and being super sweet and she noticed I really liked those chinese donuts so she kept me supplied with a fresh/hot out of the oven batch the whole time! YUMMMMM!!! Pretty sure, those donuts alone gave me a whole new stretch mark!!!

Here's us right before we left for the restaurant. We're starving.... can you tell? What a great Valentine's Day!!! Then we came hoem and Eric surprised me with a bottle of sparkling apple cider and chocolate. Because obviously I hadn't gotten enough calories at the buffet..... just kidding. It was sooo sweet and much appreciated!!! Love you honey!!!!

I love PINTEREST!!! I'm obsessed with PINTEREST!!! I'm addicted to PINTEREST!!!! aaaannnndddd....... I actually do the things I pin!!! I've cooked a few of the recipes I've pinned, I made a few fabric flowers for headbands for our new addition, but the thing I'm most excited about lately is the "kid's stuff," I've pinned. Peyton and I had such a fun day already doing the various crafts adn activities I've pinned.

This is Peyton doing monopainting! I had oodles adn oodles of puffy paint in my craft stash and i've been meaning to go through all of it to get rid of the containers that are empty so with monopainting.... I was multitasking. Getting something checked off on my to-do list AND letting Peyton have a blast with it. We covered our table and floor with newspapers, put a cookie sheet on the table and splurted out lots and lots of colors. Then with q-tips he painted designs in the paint...... then for his FAVORITE part! We took pages of white cardstock and set them on teh cookie sheet, pushed down, and WAH LA! A Peyton masterpiece! He was funny about the whole thing and didn't want to get dirty and would even scream everytime paint was on his skin (which I hurriedly wiped off with a napkin) but he LOVED making the pictures with paper. After 6.... we ran out of newspapers to lay our artwork on so we stopped there!

We then headed for the bathtub..... for the few spots of paint he'd gotten into accidentally.

I'd tried another idea from Pinterest the other day including the tub. You get a muffin tin and fill with food colored shaving cream and let him play. Well, Peyton didn't want anything to do with the stuff so this go round I didn't color the shaving cream. Well, he still wasn't sold.... so I dropped the tin in the tub and the shaving cream mounds just floated out. Turns out Peyton likes clumps of floating shaving cream. SCORE! Excited to do all the other things I pinned for kids!!!!!! And I'll have to add a post soon about the CUTEEEE fabric flowers I made for our little girl!
oh, and p.s. I will probably be obsessed with blogging in the next little while as well because I can't get over the fact that when Peyton threw our laptop, 18 months of his life in pictures and videos were erased!!!!! GONE, FOREVER, WWAAAHHHHHH!!!!!!
So blogging here I come.... gotta document the things in our life in as many places as possible!!!

fhe vs. "the bachelor"

I'm a sinner.... yup... there it is! So last night I had a GREAT family home evening lesson planned on scripture study and I was super excited to have it. Well, 7p.m. rolls around and Eric still wasn't in from the barn...... and if you must know, that throws off MY GROOVE! I have it planned everyday.... Eric gets in at 7, we eat, he helps me with the things I couldn't do around the house that day (like lifting heavy things since I'm preggo)((and I know LOTs of people hate the word preggo but this is my blog and i like it, so i'll use it if i want)) anyway, then we hang out as a family and get some much needed downtime with Eric. (unless it's his "one night a week genetic night", which means he'll spend the whole evening looking online and through cow magazines and sales to find bull matches for his cows... to put it simply. And the reason he only gets that "one day a week genetic night" is if I didn't he'd look at magazines for his breakfast, lunch and dinner break EVERYDAY and we'd NEvER get time with him, which obviously we'd already lived with that in the past and that just doesn't fly in this house!!!!!!) Ok, back to family home evening. Well, since he'd gotten in late, dinner was late, which put back family home evening which meant it was now interrupting "The Bachelor." Yup, I said it, out loud in public. That raunchy, absurd, dirty, show..... that I'm regrettably addicted to. I tell myself after every episode.... ok, time to stop watching this... it's not very nice show... but then I have to find out who goes home next, and who ends up with him in the end... so on it goes. DANG!! And the fact I think it's dirty adn raunchy is my own personal opinion.
Well, there went our family home evening last night...... and we busted out the fhe treat while our eyes were glued to that TV. EEERrrrrrrrr..... next week is another week, and I'll do better. Except the fact that there are only 3 girls left on Bachelor, so there are only 3 weeks left and at this point i'm emotionally connected to each girl so I have to watch to make sure they don't go home.(like my watching it will change that) So maybe, we should just have fhe on sunday for awhile..... because i already know wha't s going to happen next week already............