Uh...

I had a small heart attack today when I realized that we are going to need a new car seat in two months. Aaaaahhhhh! I can't believe this just dawned on me. That's $200 we don't have. Anyway, many people may say I don't have to spend that much on a convertible car seat. They have ones for $100 and less. But I just can't do it. I've done tons of research on these things and I have quite a bit of paranoia about my children's safety. So it's only Britax for us. And that means the big bucks. Oh, well. Two more months to try to get creative for that. So, it's about time for a Maren update...

Boy is she ever getting more and more fun every day. She loves to pull up and stand and then throw her hands up in the air and balance as long as she can. Then she does it all over again. And again. And again. :-) It's pretty fun because Evan is also enjoying balancing lately on one leg and hopping around on one leg. So the other night we were all hanging out in Maren's room. Evan was balancing on one leg on top of a Rubbermaid container and Maren was doing her balancing act. She will be walking before we know it, for sure! She really loves broccoli. Last night I tried to give her lots of other things besides her broccoli and it all went on the floor. But she wanted the broccoli to keep coming. Strange girl! She loves to mimic sounds you make. She does animal sounds and pretend sneezes. And we have definitely decided that she says, "hi" and "I love you". They are both really cute, but the I love you is especially sweet because it's so long and of course you can just barely make it out because she's so young. I'm sure she's only saying that because she hears it about 100 times a day from all of us! She still loves baths but hates to be in the car when it's dark outside. However, we have ammunition. We have this Suzuki Violin Volume 1 CD that has simple little songs on it on the violin. The first is Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star. She can be wailing like nobody's business. Then we turn that on and it's like magic. She's quiet through the whole song. I love it! We just couldn't live without Maren!

Evan's Faves & Christmas List

My sister, Danica, did this with her son last year when he turned 3 and it was my intention to this for Evan's birthday, too, but I forgot. Anyway, this morning as we were eating our cereal together, I interviewed little Mr. Evan Bybee about some of his favorites. Here's what he had to say:

Favorite show: Super Why
Favorite movie: Aladdin
Favorite color: Purple and blue
Favorite food: Fish ((funny about this since I think the first time he had fish (besides fish sticks only a couple of times) was last Saturday when I decided we are going to have salmon once a week because it's so good for us))
Favorite thing to do with Mom: Experiments (I asked him if he meant that was his favorite thing to do with Dad. He said no, with Mom. Ha! Just call me Bill Ny...not!)
Favorite thing to do with Dad: Exercise (I think they've done Pilates together once. It clearly made a huge impression on Evan.)
Favorite thing to do with Maren: Play instruments
Favorite place: Chuck E. Cheese
What he wants to be when he grows up: Astronaut

That was really fun to do. His responses were really quick. Too cute. So then I told him we are going to go see Santa Claus at the mall on Saturday so we'd better have a Christmas wish list ready. I asked him what he wanted for Christmas. Here's his list:

Scooter
Pretend oranges to hang on the Christmas tree (where did he get this from? Has he been to someone's house that has oranges hanging on their tree? Help me out here. This is too cute!)
Trip to Chuck E. Cheese
Pretend ice cream (again, a bit random)
Fish
Mom prods with, "what else, Evan?"
More fish
"Anything else, Evan?"
Little bit more fish

Okay, then. Love the fish times three part, too! Exercise and fish. If we got more of those two things around here, we'd be in good shape...literally. He'll be thrilled to hear that our next salmon day is only three days away. Ha! Seems like he'll be a pretty easy one for Christmas this year. :-)

Our Big 3 Year Old!

Let me start by saying that what I'm doing now feels like praying when you're feeling guilty about something. You don't want to pray because you feel ashamed and you don't want to lay all of our sins and weaknesses out on the table. Yeah. Getting back to my blog after being a slacker for some time now. I have quite a few things to put on here so I decided that if I do one a night, I will be done in about a week. That's not too bad. We'll see how I do toward my goal.

First up, Evan turned THREE...about 3 1/2 weeks ago! What I have to say about Evan is that I just had no idea that the human spirit had such a capacity to love. I mean, we all know our parents love us and we assume we are going to have this amazing love for our kids. But you really don't have any idea until you have them, do you? The fact that he came after such a life-changing loss probably only fuels my love fire. And that he almost didn't make it himself. Every day he is in our lives I feel blessed. Every day I worry about what I'd ever do if he weren't in our lives. He has such an enormous personality. He is really funny - loves to make us laugh. He is also smart. He loves to be given in-depth explanations on things (especially from Dad). He is very sweet and tender and can be heard saying, "I love you, Mom" more times in a day than I can count. He is absolutely amazing with Maren. I couldn't have asked for a better relationship between the two of them. It's hard to believe that we have a 3-year-old. Time goes by so quickly. We look forward to him going into Primary this year and getting lots of rewards for his excellent behavior. :-) Evan, we love you more than words can say. Happy Birthday, Bubbaloo!

(By the way...no need to tell me these are weird, crummy pictures. I know! We didn't really get any good ones of him. These were the best I had. And, yes, the cake is terrible! But, I did give up getting a Costco cake this year and made it myself so I'm doing better than in years past. Prepare to be wowed next year. Ha!)

My Magic Milkshake

I just have a loving story to share. One that I want to remember. So it's been a while since I've had some really great junk food. :-) I've been trying to eat really well and keep all junk out of this house. It's been a couple weeks, probably since I've had my nightly ice cream as I sit here at the computer and work and stress over my work and work some more. Well, today I was feeling the pangs of withdrawal. Ha! We got home from church and I told Michael I wanted to make some cookies. Then I remembered we had more cake mix from Evan's birthday. I could make another cake. We had nothing else in the house. No ice cream. Not so much as a Hershey's Kiss. So, I'm working on the computer, around 9:45, feeling really crazy and I decide that at midnight (technically Monday!) I will get in the car, drive-thru at McDonald's and get me an ice cream cone. Seriously! So, I told this to Michael.

He apparently thought I was crazy but he could tell I really needed a treat. So, without letting me know, he looked up the recipe for Magic Milkshakes (tastes almost exactly like a Wendy's Frosty) and made me one.

Now, especially considering he has a final and two quizzes tomorrow that he should've been doing some studying for, I thought that was totally thoughtful and loving. He said he didn't want me to have to drive to McDonald's...which I assure you would've happened if it weren't for him. I was overcome with gratitude because it hit the spot. Maybe I can make it another two weeks without another sweet treat. Or maybe I'll stop by the store tomorrow and pick up some Ben & Jerry's Half Baked ice cream. Super yum!

Thank you, Love! You are the greatest! :-)

Dead Skunk?

Michael's dad used to sing a song called Dead Skunk when Michael was little. Michael thought it was a crazy song that his dad made up. Just a couple of years ago Michael was searching around on Napster and decided to look up the song. He was really surprised to find that it was a real song. For your listening pleasure, here it is on YouTube. (The video is some guys doing a skit to the song. It's pretty...uh...lame. So you might just want to use it for the audio.) So, Michael turned it on tonight and we were all singing along before dinner. Well, we got quite a treat as we were all eating. Evan told us this "story". Hysterical!

"When I was on my mission, there was a skunk in the church. And he was going poop on the toilet. And he got flushed down the toilet. And he went down to the place where they clean the water. And then he ran up the toilet. And then he grabbed onto the toilet seat. And then he jumped off the water. And then he jumped off the seat. And the door was locked. And he had an idea. And he bonked his head on the door. And then he broke the door."

My goodness, the imagination. I still have a huge smile on my face thinking about this. I look forward to many more of these kinds of stories!! With the trials that come with a 3-year-old come many wonderful moments as well.

Birthday Sweetness

I just wanted to record, so I can look back on this when he's 15!, some of the wonderfully sweet things Evan said to me on my birthday yesterday.

• First, just shortly after waking me up (a little too early for my birthday, Evan!), he told me happy birthday without me even haven't to tell him.
• Not too long after that he asked, 'When do we get to sing happy birthday to you, Mom?' I told him he could do it whenever he wanted. Right then he broke into song. It was the sweetest happy birthday I've ever heard.
• He and Michael read a book once that says, "I love you more than the sun, more than the moon, more than the stars." So, ever since reading that, they say that to each other every night. I'm out of that loop because while they're sharing that loving time, I'm getting my work done on the computer. So, he was eating a peanut butter cup (thanks, Tam!), which he has never heard the name of, and he says to me, "Mom, I love you more than Tootsie Rolls, more than this candy, more than green suckers." Yeah, this sucker was melting.
• He protected me from dinosaurs. He offered me the last peanut butter cup, he was sweet and wonderful and thoughtful. Thank you, Evan, for bringing loving tears to my eyes on my birthday!

Halloween 2007

We had a fun Halloween this year. We borrowed a pink leopard costume for Maren from someone my mom knows and as soon as Evan saw it, he said that he wanted to be a cheetah. Okay. So much for using his Superman jammies that we used last year. Well, there are NO cheetah costumes online or in stores that I could find. We weren’t sure what we were going to do. Then one day Michael stopped off at Goodwill on his way home from school and found a giraffe costume that would work after quite a bit of doctoring. He and Evan went to my mom’s house one night and stayed until 11 p.m. removing a giraffe mane and horns and sewing the head back together. They also added some fabric to the crotch because it was too small and repositioned the ears. Thanks, Mom, for all the help!! Later we removed an embroidered giraffe that had been on the chest, blackened the brown spots, and stuffed and wired the tail. What a job! He was thrilled with his costume, though. Michael did his make-up and it took just about an hour to do. Evan was such a trooper and very patient as it was being done. (Surprised me!) Everyone said he looked great and was a cute little cheetah. With the make-up on, I seriously don't think I could've picked him out of a line-up. He sure didn't look like Evan! Maren was a pink leopard on Saturday and a fuzzy pink monster on Halloween (thanks, Sarah!).


Our festivities included a three or four-ward trunk or treat. We got there 45 minutes late but there was still plenty going on. Then we did a bit of trick or treating in a neighborhood near ours and went to a party held by some people in our ward. They had TONS of food. That was a blessing since I hadn’t eaten since lunch and it was 8 p.m.! When we got home, Evan wanted to count all of his candies and kept telling us how much fun we had.

Having kids sure has changed my outlook on Halloween. It’s much more fun now. Not about having my birthday on Halloween, though. It’s still the pits…sorry Mom! Michael and Evan did make me a Rice Krispie treat cake to take to the party, however. Just like last year, Michael let everyone in on the secret that I’m a witch and everyone sang happy birthday to me at the party. Thanks, Babe! Evan wanted to take a picture of me and since it didn’t turn out TOO awful, here I am being 31 years old.

And today Michael got a picture of Evan with his pumpkin before it went the way of all the earth. They got on the Internet and Evan got to pick which face he wanted. He didn’t want a funny one or a nice one. He wanted a scary one. I think this fit the bill.


And who can resist one more picture of Maren? Me either. I was noticing the contrast in their eyes the other day. One with hazel eyes, one with blue. I just love it. They are both beautiful while still being so different.