Halloween Early Preview

These are pictures from our ward Halloween party on Saturday. As you can see, Ethan is Woody, Noah is Buzz, and Joe and I are the children who own these toys...or the bratty kids at the daycare-take your pick.

Yes, we do realize these aren't flattering for some of us. Joe was very worried about his blacked-out tooth. We used a sharpie and yes it did come off with a quick brushing. I am posting these pics as per the Whitehead family's request, but also to show off a little. My sister in law sent us this awesome buzz costume, but the woody i bought as a size 7-8! It was huge and I hemmed and took in -nipped and tucked until this bad boy was a 2T. (silent applause) thank you thank you.

*I tried to post this on Monday, but for some reason blogger wouldn't let me post. Strange.
So to continue my update, Ethan is now sick...again. It is starting to get ridiculous how often my family is sick. In the past 3 weeks I've been sick, Joe has been sick twice, Noah has been sick 3 times and courtesy of this last ear infection, Ethan has been sick 3 times as well. Of course the boys would never get sick at the same time-thats not how it works, oh no. That would be too simple. One would get sick-we'd work through it and as soon as he starts getting better brother would get sick too. Maybe it's better that way since I can't cuddle them at the same time. I mean, I could. I'm capable. They don't really let me though. They just end up squirming and fighting for position and kicking or hitting each other. Anyway, back to the point. I'm sick of all of this sickness. I'm sick of Joe and I being up all night, and I'm sick of being stuck inside.

On a more positive note, Noah finally catching on with his "S" words. Not that "S" word obviously. I mean saying "snake" instead of "nake" or "stop" instead of "dop". Noah and Ethan both can tell me whether they pooped or just farted. Noah also does a pretty good impression of a burp. Ya, we've been stuck at home for 3 weeks, what do you expect? We appreciate the simple thrills i guess. In retrospect I could have spent this time potty training, but I really didn't expect one sickness after another. Plus the boys are still terrified of the potty. Well, this is getting to be a long post so I'll just end with a postitive. Noah was making me laugh so hard as he was repeating me instructing Ethan to go to bed. How can they take me seriously when I laugh the whole time? I couldn't help it. This is how it went.

Translations: Noah says Ethan like E'ees, and he says lala as a transition between words.

Me: Ethan, go to bed

Noah: E'ees! Lala bed!

Me: Ethan lay your head down please

Noah: E'ees! uh head uh down! PEESE! (he's yelling)

Ethan: NO!

Me: Ethan (in a warning tone)

Noah: E'ees! (in the same tone)

I'm trying not to laugh

Me: Ethan, its time to go to sleep-now!

Noah: E'ees! a lala SEEP! NOW!

Me: (laughing) JOE!

Noah: (laughing) DOE!

Ethan: (laughing) DOE!

I got a pretty good kick out of it.

Celebrate Good Times!

i don't know how joe did it, but he did. I wouldn't say that he is the very best at computer stuff, but he's pretty darn good. He was able to recover our pictures and home videos! He recovered over 6,000 photos and i'm so grateful to have them back-hence the picture overload here. There is no possible way for me to caption each pic-sorry. you'll just have to look and enjoy...or look and get bored bc there are SO MANY pictures!

The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

its been a month now that I've been ignoring my blog. Sorry guys. Our lives have been pretty boring over the last month. well, as boring as it can get with my two little monsters running around. Our lives have consisted of battling the boys over meals, getting dressed, and going to bed. I've been trying to get them out of the house more often so they're at least a little tuckered out during nap time. it's helped a little i suppose. But the boys have mastered the art of driving me insane during nap time. they play and laugh and fight, and then they get naked, tear out all of their clothes from their dresser and closet, and then pull the mattresses off of their beds EVERY DAY. its getting ridiculous really. I'm trying to rely more on the Spirit to help me since I have already tried, taking away toys and blankies, yelling, putting in time out, spanking (which i HATE doing), or even giving in to their every request. I'd tried everything I could think of, until i listened to General Conference. I'd hear in several talks about the importance of relying on the Spirit to help you, so I'm trying it out. Hopefully it works out.
So, now I'll address the title, starting with the bad news. i suppose the previous paragraph is bad and good new too. oh well. SO, the bad news: We've been having issues with our computers lately. First this and that was acting funny on the laptop, so Joe finally decided to completely reformat the whole thing. Before he did that, he transferred all of our pictures and home videos onto the external hard drive so we could start with a clean slate on the computer. Of course as luck would have it, the hard drive crashed. We lost probably over a thousand pictures. We've looked into data recovery, but that prospect is looking pretty grim. That's the bad news.
The good new is that i have the blog. I have those pictures and videos. I have the pictures that I've scrap booked and i was pretty much caught up. I have a CD with my bridals and our wedding pictures on them. We have a few videos on a mini DVD from our previous camera, and when Joe's parents were here this summer i collected about 20 of my favorite pics of the boys and put them on an SD card for her.
I am trying to be positive about this. In reality I am extremely lucky that i have as many pictures as i do, considering that i could have nothing. Thank you Tawnya for inviting me to scrapbook with you-i owe you a lot for that. I have my children now, and I can take more pictures. I have a family who loves me, and friends who are like family as well.
I'm counting my blessings, but I'm also urging you readers to BURN YOUR PICTURES ONTO A CD, or store them online.
sorry this is a depressing post. I'm committing to post my new pictures on the blog so they can be safe forever-and you guys can see them too!

Save Me A Piece of That Corn

Remember the other night when the temperature was blissful and the humidity was virtually non-existant? We decided to BBQ and enjoy our dinner outside. Little did we know how much Noah would enjoy dinner!

Before and Afters

how did Joe's hand get this nasty? SANDING
We've been doing a lot of sanding lately. Joe looks SO DIRTY! This is from this afternoon. He is just dripping with sweat.

It's a little unnerving how much i enjoyed taking these pictures. He's so manly!

OK, OK. here are the projects that we (Joe mostly) has been working on this summer.

Here is the before of a dresser/mirror combo we bought off of craigslist for $10.

A little elbow grease and some black paint!

We ended up selling this bad boy since it didn't really fit in our bedroom.


Some of you in the ward may have remembered me talking about a "gem of a find" from goodwill that i was sorely tempted to buy on a Sunday since i saw it 5 min before closing time on Saturday night.

This is that gem. Its a perfect sewing desk for our little 3rd bedroom.

After:

The picture doesn't really do it justice, but trust me it's really fun!

These are the knobs that came w the desk-we just spray painted them!

I think Joe and I are a little obsessed! We've definitely caught the furniture bug. If you are looking for something to redo or add to your home, let me know because we've run out space at our house!

So the other night before bed Jessica and I put on the movie "A Bug's Life" for the boys to watch. They have seen it a couple of times in the van when we travel too. The boys cant say Flick so they call the main character "week". After the movie we had dinner, brushed their teeth and put them to bed. A little while later we heard them yelling, "DIE DIE DIE...ouch!" We quickly realized it was from a scene from the movie. We laughed as they kept saying it for about ten minute. I guess they are now in the stage where they repeat everything they hear. The also yell "oh shoot" cuz they learned that from Mater on Cars. We will have to pay better attention the the media we bring into our home I guess.

Good News from the Doctor

...my gastroenterologist. Which Doctor were you thinking?
I had a check up today with my GI doctor to see how I've been...healing? I guess you could call it that. Last time they tested my blood, my count was at a 9 for gluten badness. I'm not exactly sure what they're testing. Being between a 5 and 8 is normal, and I SHOULD be below 5 after being on a strict gluten free diet. The mean nurse never believes me that I'm following my diet, and after this test result, my Dr had no reason to believe me either. But I AM! I AM following my diet. I've checked and rechecked all my groceries. I don't cheat and eat a cupcake when I feel like it. But after telling this to my Doctor, he was curious as to what my blood test was like the first time I came to see him. He flipped through my chart and found that before diagnosing me with Celiacs, my blood levels were ABOVE 100! Meaning that they are only capable of measuring up to 100, and I was way beyond that. It could have been 2,000 for all they knew. So, Dr. Shreve said that going from beyond 100+ to only 9 was really excellent. He even went as far as to say that I was 98% recovered.
I TOLD YOU I was following my diet!
Isn't that awesome! As I was telling Joe about it on the phone I was almost shaking. I was really frazzled. I had gone from almost crying because I was being told that I still wasn't doing a good enough job eliminating gluten from my diet to *poof* I'm 98% recovered.
Physically I am feeling the progress. I'm feeling a lot better, and now hearing this good new makes me feel a lot more confident about this whole thing.
Sorry to bore those of you who were looking for a pregnancy related post. Gotcha.

Random stuff we've been up to

I realized that I never posted a picture of Ethan's cast. For those who don't already know, our little E fractured his elbow about 2 weeks ago. He'll have this cast for at least 3 weeks. He does really well working around the cast though. Its actually really cute when its not super sad. These are my couch pillows that I've ALWAYS hated. Right from the start I hated these pillows. Now I'm finally recovering them.
Before:

After:

Sorry, I'll get a better picture once i've finished with the pillows. I just have to hand-stitch the bottom closed, so it is taking a while. More pillow pictures to come.

And I realized that we never posted a before picture of the Hawkeye dresser. Here it is. Scroll to the next post to see the after photo.

Latest Craft Project

We realized we didn't have room in our apt for another piece of furniture, so we sold it and made $110 profit. Not too bad eh?

some new some old.

I was just thinking about how my little boys will grow up someday and they won't be mine anymore. But today they are. They give me kisses when I ask for them and they tackle-hug me, and they say Dee-do (thank you) Mommy. Most of the time I complain about what pills they are, but today I just keep thinking about their sweet little faces and how much I love them. I really hope that they will always love me this much.