a magic carpet ride...in tooele utah

the annual halloween festivities has come around again to tooele.

first was halloween bunco night.

(this time sans princess jasmine's eyebrows)

i seriously love these girls.  and i ended up winning most buncos and got a $20 gift card!  princess jasmine gave me great arabian luck.

then the next day was our ward's trunk or treat partay!

and this time, abu came along.

my mom, aunt, and sis erin came along, which was nice to have extra hands to wrangle sugar filled abu and we binged on chili.

i took abu through the row of trunks to fill up his bucket with candy he can't eat and it was so thrilling to see his reaction to ward members giving him sweet treats. but every time he got a lollipop he dug it out of his bucket and started sucking on it, wrapper and all.

erin was a sassy punkin, i cuddled with aladdin and an octopus, everton disapproved of his greedy auntie erin digging through his newly won treasures, my mom, aunt, and erin loved snuggling abu to keep him warm.

i got to wear my costume 3 times and it's time to retire princess jasmine this year.  she's starting to bloat from all the chili and she's been stealing candy from abu's halloween bucket.

p.s. everton tuned 18 months today.  and does he say "mama" yet?  nope, just "ashes." the lazy bum.  i'm still not too worried.  he has his 18 month appt on monday and we'll see what his doc wants to do.  and he can now officially be in nursery, even though he's been going since 15 months (and he freakin loves it!)   everton is getting more and more active and tells us his opinions of things through his cute sneaky face.  i love my abu.

aladdin, jasmine, and abu hopes everyone has a great and safe halloween!

early halloweekend

i am so excited it's halloween season.  i always dread the autumn chilliness but do get quite excited for halloween.  the inner little girl gets released and i get to dress up as whomever i darn well please.

i don't get to go trick or treating anymore but that's what having kids are for!  but as of right now, brett and i went to a friend's adult halloween party this past weekend and i decided to do another disney theme, like last year's halloween, and this time brett was able to join the family awesomeness.  

aladdin and jasmine was this year's outfit of choice.  and pretty sure this was my 3rd time being princess jasmine in my life. the amazing jill did my makeup and hair.  and check out those eyebrows she gave me!

this was the second time i was the arabian princess, in 11th grade.  yeah ok.  check me and my bedroom slippers out.

 brett is definitely not the type to dress up in costume but he was such a good sport and i love him even more.  he made a darling aladdin.

so aaron, jill's husband was bob ross and jill was his happy little tree.

this was the sexy cheesecake i made for the partay.  brown sugar pumpkin cheesecake with a chocolate shortbread crust.  but it wasn't lookin good with the whip cream melting all over but it sure did taste sexay.

matt the fashion disaster, danny as the guy from how to train your dragon (which i haven't seen yet so idk who he really is,) aladdin, ben the wizard, and aaron aka bob ross. 

tati the fashion disaster, nat as the girl from how to train your dragon, kelsey as the cute witch, jill the happy little tree, and yours truly.

LOVE MY FRIENDS.

stay tuned for abu!  he'll be making his debut this weekend at the ward's trunk or treat.

pissy day

so i've been dog-sitting my parent's dog tootsie this week and will continue to do so next week while my parents are down in cedar city visiting my sis, kyla.

i love the toots, but i'm not used to having to take care of a dog and child at the same time.  

toots has to take a dump?  i have to put the harness on toots, haul everton out with me in his pjs, and venture off outside to watch tootsie do her business.  and then picking the poop off the ground is a feat in itself.

tootsie was whining at 1am last night so i had to go down and tuck her back into bed.  later at around 8.40ish am, brett's been long gone to work and tootsie had to piss.  i took her out quickly then got everton from bed.  i just slightly touched his back and poop was smeared all up on it.  

oh ok newborn.  cleaned him up and got the dog and child fed for breakfast.

fast forward to lunchtime.  

everton hasn't been eating lunch or dinner lately.  becoming anorexic everton?  cuz i love your chubby thighs and your hanging over your pants belly.  so him not eating always stresses me out.  and it's not like i'm feeding him anything really new.  not eating and grumpy?  off to take a nap you go.

and you know what, i'm feeling that i need a nap too.

i lock the baby gate behind me as i go up the stairs and i tuck myself into my delicious bed.

and then i took a blissful 2 hr nap.

FALSE.

tootsie was whining again and i could hear everton chanting for a whole two hours in his crib.  i was in my bed seething.  i was dying for a nap.

i got restless everton from his crib and got started on folding laundry.  

everton helped me out by throwing the big pile of socks into the air like someone just got married. 

that, i didn't mind, it was pretty adorable.

when i was finally done with laundry everton and i went downstairs and i flipped on the tv.  clueless was on, THANK YOU!!  so i got to relax a little bit.  everton was entertaining himself with some toys and toots was doing her usual thang of licking herself inappropriately and such.  i was on the computer and up comes on my twitter feed the LDS church tweeting, "have you counted your blessings today?"

crap, i'm such a jerk.  i wanted to cry.  here i was stomping around, being momzilla, while other stay at home mommies are most likely dealing with bigger problems other than lack of a nap or you know, they have more kids than me.

so then i started to think, well what are my blessings today??

brett always kisses me goodbye before he leaves for work, even though most of the time i'm sonked out.

just seeing everton's smiling face ALWAYS warms me up.

when tootsie looks at me like puss in boots from shrek.

(tootsie really isn't that bad to have around)

everton dancing to the hot dog dance at the end of micky mouse clubhouse.

everton's laugh.

whenever everton says ashes, and that's still the only word he says.

when brett comes home from work is a tremendous blessing to me.  "get your kid honey!"

the chocolate ice cream in my freezer is also a great blessing.

i need to take a pause everyday and thank my Heavenly Father for all that i have.  and to realize that there are people out there in the world that have bigger problems than i do.

and right now, these...

aren't really problems.

the semi-annual filipino fireside

as many of you know, i'm half filipino!

[yes daddy, i know that rhymed.]

and i went with my parents this past weekend to the semi-annual filipino fireside in slc while brett and everton stayed at home.

just a quick lesson in filipino geography, the philippines is located south of taiwan and east of vietnam.  and my mom is from kalibo, the capital of the aklan province (see fat red arrow.)

my parents met while serving in the manila, philippines mission and that amazing love story is a whole 'nother blog post in it's own.

i've never been to the philippines.  but i hope to go one day with my family and learn more about my heritage and to do some genealogy cuz i can never find anything here on the filipino side of the fam.

ANYWAYS,

back to the filipino fireside, i've never seen so many brown people.  shows how often i've been to san fran. 

the fireside was lovely.  they had some mission presidents and RMs who recently served in the philippines give their testimonies and then light refreshments in the cultural hall.

 i realized that wearing heels made me about 2 ft taller than everyone else.  the gym was packed and started getting hot and stuffy due to a million filipinos gabbing.

i don't know who the last 2 ladies are on the right.

my mom's new buddies.  the guy on the right served in aklan and can speak my mom's native dialect, aklanon, which is pretty rare.

i do not know who these people are.

filipino represent!

the parents.

it was a pretty fun night.  

and i'm super proud to be filipino!

teal the cows come home

it was everton's first sunday in a while not wearing a romper or khaki shorts to church.

so OF COURSE i had to take a ton of pics and blog about it.

a very sweet awkward smile.

everton is not impressed

so long sweet summer.  i think we're ready for fall!

i think.