last halloween tidbits

after all of our halloween celebrations this month, it still wasn't actually HALLOWEEN yet.

to prepare for our halloween we stuffed ourselves with cookies and milk

and then got onto pumpkin carving, which is something brett and i haven't done since we've been married.

i picked out an AWESOME stencil and we got to work.

everton was curious

and disgusted.

our finished work.  can't tell what it is?? it's mah favorite dude, loki.

and speaking of loki check out what my awesome friend jill made!

i love him.  seriously, jill is amazing.

also since brett and i have been married, we haven't been too into decorating for holidays.  in rexburg we just had our small apt and now here in tooele, i feel like people just aren't into halloween as they were out east.

but my mom helped me out and halloweened our house...and we were pretty much the only decorated ones in our area.

and what kind of halloween is this?? wearing shorts?  it was seriously such a beautiful day.

and i won this sign in bunco awhile back!  glad i already had some kind of decor.

can you tell it's loki now??  i love this pumpkin.

so halloween night came and we got a whopping 12 trick or treaters.  seriously what's wrong with kids these days?  turns out a lot of my friends would just take their kids to the nicer neighborhoods in tooele or to their parents' neighborhoods.  i can TOTALLY understand that.  if i wanted to trick or treat for heroin i could just go across the street.  we didn't take everton out, he got plenty of enough candy from the ward's trunk or treat.  we finished out the night by putting a sugar filled abu to bed and watched obama's america, 2016, which was horrifying enough for halloween.

ttyl october, we're onto november, the month of giving thanks and stuffing our faces with turkey.

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.

party by numbers

as i stated in my last post, my parents are in utah and will be for about a month!  lucky brett! 

and like always, i am LOVING having them here.  they dote on their grand babies like there's no tomorrow. they help me out so much and as usual, whenever my mom cooks for us i get fatter and fatter but i ain't complainin.

they've only been here for about a week and we've done so much already.

join me as i take us through our week's events, number by number.

1. we ate scrumptious sushi at the happy sumo and had froyo at juicyberry.

2. brett and i attended our first progressive dinner in our ward.  if you don't know what that is, it's where you go to different houses for different courses.  we traveled all over our ward boundary to have salad, soup, grilled chicken (which was so good i hoarded some in an empty bread bag and stuffed in my purse for the rest of the night,) baked potatoes, and finished off the night for dessert and play-dough ice cream, which is what i contributed for the night.  and how did we travel to all these homes for grub?  by hayride of course!  yeah our ward is that country.

3. everton's just a n00b.

4. we had a party for my dad and erin's birthday and had a mix of filipino and mexican food.  and no party is complete without those addicting lumpia rolls.

5. we invited my best friend charlene, her FIANCE adam, mitch and jenny (who is having a baby girl in january) and kyla and travis were able to come up from where they live now, cedar city, ut. it's crazy how much we've all grown since high school, we're all married/getting married, having babies, and working grown up jobs.

6. so erin had only stayed with us for about 3 weeks and we had waited the entire time to see if she would get accepted to ldsbc.  then the friday before classes were to start she finally got her acceptance letter to ldsbc.  saturday we all went to slc to get her an apt, sunday we helped her move in and she was on her way. she found a great group of friends that make her so happy and that makes me happy.  and they all came over to party and celebrate erin's birth.

7. i just love my cute parents and their homemade mango ice cream. yummm

8. the decatos (charlene's fam) and the jones have been together for about 10 years now.  holy crap! and our families keep growing and growing.

9. my poor little poohead was pooped by the end of the party.

10. my parents took everton and hazel on a brisk walk on the second day of fall.  my parents reported that everton held hazel's hand protectively while dragging his foot in the dirt.  and then they had asian popsicles that we got from the asian market.  turns out everton ate the entire popsicle and hazel ate half, while everton ate the other half of hers.

11. while kyla and travis were here we went to the brigham city temple dedication and it was beautiful.  i can't wait to do a session there sometime.

12. kyla, travis, and baby hazel had to go back to cedar city.  but no worries, we'll be seeing them again soon.

13.  and lastly, everton finally got his stitches out!  i had to anaconda squeeze him so he doesn't squirm as much for the doc and i think that's what he fussed more about.  but the doc was fast and everton's cut looks great.  and everton got a delicious dum dum lollipop which he never fails to bite part of the stick off along with the candy resulting in me digging in his mouth for the part of the stick.

and that's the end of the party for now!  thanks for joining.