Giving Thanks For Family

Thanksgiving!!! We were lucky to have Grandpa, Grandma, and Ashton come visit us in Texas for Thanksgiving. We couldn't wait for them to come! We were counting down the days for forever it seemed like. When they finally got here, Hadley went and picked them up at the airport after work, and we all met at the Rainforest Cafe for dinner. The kids have been dying to eat here, so it was super exciting. Plus, that place is just cool. We all loved when the animals would start moving around (except for Jerz, she was afraid).

Look at this dessert...

Oh how I love dessert!





Jeter got sick the night before they flew in, and was sick the entire time they were here, except for the last day. It was such a bummer. He loves playing with Ashton and didn't really get to play at all. He mainly just slept, whined, and cried cuz his stomach was hurting him so bad all through the day. Then every night he would throw up. It was the weirdest sickness ever. So here we are getting ready to eat Thanksgiving Dinner...

without Jeter and Jerzi (they were both in bed asleep).




Yum, it was delicious! Had did most of it (or so he claimed), and he did a pretty awesome job. The turkey was awesome. But so were the cute little turkeys that me and Ashton made out of cookies and candy, that I got a lotta crap for taking the time to make. HAHA

Even though Jete was sick, we decided to head out to the Houston Aquarium. He was a good little trooper, and probably slept for half of the trip in the stroller. Poor kid! The weather was perfect though, not too hot or not too cold. We enjoyed every second of it.

My two favorite fish we saw....

The sparkly but fierce pirahna, and this other fish that looks like he has a sweet paint job.

The stingray pool was a big hit. And I loved to watch Blayne with my kids. I could totally see the love that he has for them. It's sad to me that my kids don't get to have these kinds of interactions with their grandparents more often than they do. So I love to sit back and watch, and take pics like crazy.

I know this probs sounds kinda nerdy, but I love to watch Had being a cute little daddy to Jerzi, when he thinks I'm not watching. It makes me so happy to know that I have such a good husband and daddy for my kids.

The deep sea divers!

Yes, that tiger is real!

(But I have no clue why they have a tiger in an aquarium)

This tiger is not real, but I think Jerz was more scared of this one.

While Ashton and Jerzi were havin all the fun, poor little Jete was lookin like this.
It seriously was so sad to see him like this. He was so weak and tired. He just sat there until we moved him to the next spot.

They had a little train that went in a big tunnel under water with sharks in it. It was pretty sweet to see all of them swimming over us and on the sides of us.

They are so freaky looking!

We had so much fun spending time with them! We all can't wait until they can come back again. Hopefully next time no one will be sick, and we won't have to be worried if we need to make a trip to the E.R. the whole time. :) We loved having you guys here! Thank you so much for coming and for everything!

Yabba Dabba Doo!

McArthurs. Meet the McArthurs.

We're the modern stone age family.

From the town of Bedrock, we're a page right out of history!

For Halloween this year, we dressed up as the Flinstones.

Wanna meet the family?

Fred
(Notice the juice box in his hand? Someone had a huge cooler, and gave drinks out instead of candy. Awesome huh?!)

Wilma

Bamm Bamm



Pebbles




When I was trying to decide what Jete and Jerz could be for Halloween, I read on the internet how some people made Flinstone costumes in like 3 hours, right before a Halloween party. I thought that would be a cute idea and fairly easy to make. I also know that I usually take longer than anyone to do anything, so I figured it would take me a lot longer than 3 hours. Plus I'm definitely not what one would call a seamstress. I don't know how to use patterns, so I just had to make them up as I was going. Well, after working on them for one week straight, I finished them right in time for our ward trunk or treat. So I was pretty happy that we were all able to fit in them and that people recognized that we were dressed as the Flinstones.

They had all sorts of games set up for the kids at the church for the Halloween party, like bowling, fishing, mini golf, a cakewalk, etc. They also had a little costume parade for all the primary kids and handed out awards after it.... and Little Miss Jerzi girl won an award. Yay!


The actual trunk or treat was a little ridiculous. There was so much candy. We didn't even go to all the trunks cuz their candy buckets were too full. So Jeter and Jerzi sat in our trunk and started chowing down while Had passed out candy to the same kids that were making their rounds for the 3rd and 4th time. I did love seeing how creative some of the people were that decorated their trunks though. Some people really get into it. It was awesome. Not us. I didn't even think about decorating ours. Woops.

Bamm Bamm and Pebbles....they're showing us their muscles.

Me and Had decided that we were going to dress up to take the kids around trick or treating. It was fun. And what I really loved was that we got to just go out in our costumes, and I didn't have to make the costumes to fit over a big puffy coat or snowsuit.

I mainly just put this picture on here cuz it's so crazy to see green bushes and trees instead of bare bushes and trees with no leaves on them, or covered in snow on Halloween.

Gotta love Texas weather!

I totally remember doing this as a little kid....

dumping out all my candy and just being sooo excited.

Now I just look at all the candybars that they got and get excited. :)

Halloween is GREAT!

Birthday Girl!

It's that time of year again, where things get a little crazy in my house. Our sweet little Jerzi girl had a birthday on Oct. 27th! She's officially two now, even though people have asked us if she is 2, 3, and 4 for quite some time. Now when we answer them, maybe they won't feel as sheepish when we say she's 2, instead of 1. So we have her birthday on the 27th, Halloween the 31st, Had's birthday on Nov. 8th, and mine on Nov. 14th. So for almost 3 weeks straight we are partying it up, and eating a whole lotta crap. For some reason I take it upon myself to do things that don't necessarily need to be done for all these occasions, like making all of our Halloween costumes, making cakes that I have no clue how, etc. but it's fun once I get them done, and hopefully someday they will be appreciated. :)

Some things I want to remember about Jerzi right now:

-She's still very emotional: cries (more like screams) at the drop of a hat, laughs at anything, gets so excited over the littlest things.

-She loves pink

-She loves to play with Jeter, but always ends up crying

-She always hears the tiniest little noises, like background noises that nobody would ever notice, and looks at us and says "Noise?"

-She loves to look at the moon

-She is the best airplane spotter I've ever seen

-She already had to get her crib converted to a toddler bed a few months ago because she was climbing in and out of it in the middle of the night. Then when she started opening her door and wandering around the house at night, we had to figure out a new method to keep her in. We put the crib back together, but dropped her mattress clear down to the floor, so she can't climb out. So far it's working, she's only climbed out once.

-She thinks she can do anything Jeter can do, and she always tries.

-She loves dirtbikes, football, and baseball right now.

-Whenever she sees football on tv, she yells out "DOE (go) DUUUCKS!!!

-Whenever anyone mentions baseball, she pretends she's swinging a bat and yells, "Hit hard!"

-She loves to dress up and "accessorize" herself with her bracelets, rings, leg warmers, tights, hats and shoes. When she was getting out of her bed in the middle of the night, she'd go get in her closet and start putting on all her crap, all in the pitch black. So at 3 in the morning, I would have to take off all that stuff before putting her back to bed.

-She loves to wear Jete's football jersey's and basketball shorts all the time.

-She has to do everything herself. She has to feed herself, put on her own clothes, get in the car and in her carseat by herself, jump into her crib by herself, etc. Then she freaks out if she's having a hard time with any of them. It makes for some fun times at our house. :)

-She can count to 13

-She's a big time Momma's girl

-She loves meat, noodles, pancakes, waffles, and french toast

-She is usually a really good girl and sits there nice and still for me to do her hair

-She wants baseball cleats for Christmas

-She loves to say prayers

-She amazes us with the things she understands

-She had a hard time going to nursery at first, now she goes without a problem, and she loves singing the primary songs.

Jeter wouldn't let me take a picture without him in it too. She looks bugged. haha

So before Jerzi's birthday, Jete asked her what kind of cake she wanted. He told her "Mom can make you any kind of cake you want." So glad he has faith in me. She answered Jete by saying she wanted a pink helmet. I kind of just blew it off, cuz she's just obsessed with helmets right now. But then when we started asking her what she wanted for her birthday, she answered the same way every time....a pink helmet cake.

Yeah.

I had no idea how to make it, but Had of course, kept encouraging it. So I somewhat figured out how to make her a pink Ducks helmet cake for her birthday.
DOE DUCKS!!!

She loved it, and was so excited when she saw it, so I'm glad I made it for her, even if it took me a lot longer than a regular cake would have. :)

Happy Birthday to our sweet, little, kissy face, Jerzi girl!

We love you!!!

Beach Day In October!

So the other day I got a few picture texts sent to my phone.
They were of The Beautiful Rexburg, Idaho; sent because they wanted us to see that it was snowing there.
I couldn't help but laugh, cuz I happened to get them when we were hangin out at the beach.

As much as I love Rexburg, I'm glad I'm in Houston right now! It's finally cool enough that we can hang out outside without sweating our brains out.

We were all pretty excited to be there!

Our friends Daniel, Amanda and their kids came to visit us from Cleveland. It was so much fun having them here!

Jeter and Madilyn played like crazy, and ran around like maniacs all over the beach. Jete acted like he's never seen sand or water before. He started rolling around in it, making "sand angels", and splashing and crashing the waves. Here's the sand castle they built, only I think they turned it into a volcano instead of a castle.

Jerzi loved the waves, and wanted to run out in them by herself, but they kept knocking her over. Then she would get all grossed out when she got the water in her mouth cuz of the salt. She would try to wipe it out, and then get sand in her mouth. It's rough being little. I think this is right after she got a little mouthful of water.

I loved looking at the cute beach houses that lined the shore. How fun would that be to stay in one of these for a week and go surfing, lay out, go running along the beach, and build sand castles every day? One day, I'm gonna take a vacation like this.

Life isn't always peachy for us though. Especially for this little boy.

We went to Wal Mart one day and Jete saw those little swing sets out in front of the store. So he ran over to the swing, climbed on up, and started swinging. Next thing I know, he is falling out backwards, head first, onto the concrete.... and I watched it all happen, but couldn't manage to move my legs to catch him. I felt horrible for him. He let out a huge wail of a screaming cry, that I'm sure everyone in the parking lot heard. I tried to calm him down, or at least get him to stop crying so loud and then I felt his head. There was an instant ginormous goose egg!

So for those of you at home keeping track of how many goose eggs this poor little boy conjures up......add one more to the list!

It was hard to get a good picture of this. It looked and felt a lot bigger than this in real life.

Here's what the top of it looked like.

And I just wanted to throw these last ones of Jerzi in for the family. So here's what her hair normally looks like....... curly, wavy, out of controllish.

Well, I straightened it the other day. Look how long it is!
Someone asked me if she was 4 years old last week.

HAHA

Nope, just 1.

Jeter's playin for the Red Sox?

It was just a little ironic that when we signed Jeter up for t-ball this year, they put him on the Red Sox team. I'm pretty sure that whoever made up the teams thought that they were being pretty funny. Oh well, I guess that's what we get.

He gets to play though, and we're all so excited for that. He's too young to play any other sport here right now, and he definitely needs something. So Jeter playin for the Red Sox is gonna have to fly.

Jete's 1st t-ball game

Ooh, check out his intensity!

Little Jeter man up to bat!

What?!!! And he's stealing 2nd folks! Look at him go!

Ok, there's not really stealing in t-ball, but it looks like he is. Love this pic.




He stops on 3rd to pose for the camera.

Playin 2nd base.

(It was kinda funny they had him playing 2nd. That's the position me and Had both played in high school.)

Jerzi cried a bunch of times during the game. She kept saying to me that she wanted to go hit the ball too. Aww, made me so proud! HAHA She calmed down after she discovered the announcer's box though. She loved to climb up there and play in it.

(She picked out her own outfit this day, which I normally don't let her do. But she was freakin out cuz she wanted to wear a jersey too, cuz Jete was. And of course she had to wear a hat too. Even though her entire apparel came out of Jete's closet, I figured oh well, I'm probs the only one that cares anyway.)

My little tomboy

Good game Rays! Neither of us got anybody out. :)

Hangin out with his new friends after the game.

These three boys are faster than any of the other kids on the team, and are all very competitive. The coach always has these three race each other in practice. It's so interesting to watch how these 3 just gravitated towards each other, and see them become friends based on that.

My favorite pic!

Huh?.........

"Mom!!! We get treats after the game! Are these really mine? Do I get to eat these myself?"

Yes Jete, it's all yours.

"This is so cool!!!"

Look who won the game ball!

My thoughts on t-ball so far:

I was super excited for him to play. Then I accidentally signed myself up to be the team mom, so that took away a little of the excitement for me. The league is intense, and serious, which is a good thing, I guess. They have games and practices like 3 times a week. But the coach gets mad at the kids for playing in the dirt, won't let them be by their friends cuz they'll talk too much, and expects them to know everything already. Jete is having fun most of the time though, and is showing us that he is coachable, so it's all good. I'm a little sad that nothing too funny has happened yet. It's too serious for that. I remember hearing lots of people's funny stories about their kids in t-ball. Mainly my sister's.....I start to laugh just thinking about them. I'm pretty sure we won't get to experience those kinds of things, but oh well. I think Jete is having fun (mostly) and Jerzi is starting to love sports too! Life is good.

Go Sox!