Shouldn't have worn flip flops today.

Under that snowy stroller cover sits my three children, warm and dry. Though I'm sure drivers passing me walking across the street in the blizzard pushing them considered calling CPS. Thankyou freakish Utah winter weather for being totally clear at 4:30 on our way across the street to Cookie Cutters, and a raging snow storm by 5:15 on our way home.

Green Smoothie

I go through phases of super healthy eating, and super whatever-I-don't-care eating.
Anyone else?
Lately it's been healthy stuff (obviously - I'm not going to blog/brag about eating crap).
Specifically GREEN SMOOTHIES.
I know, super trendy.
Don't roll your eyes.
They're amazing.
Green veggies are ALIVE. So many other foods are DEAD.
So if you are what you eat...

The best part is that my kids drink them too. That makes my heart sing with joy.
I don't care what their diapers look like afterward.
 There's no other way for their little bodies to absorb all the nutrients from green vegetables before they are passed (cuz what kid sits down with a nice big salad, no dressing?!)
So I've learned from my experimenting that they keys to a great green smoothie are frozen bananas and grapes. Their taste and texture overpower everything. Others are great too- we've thrown in just about everything- but bananas and grapes. Must use.
Favorite greens- kale, spinach, collards, arugula. I want to try others, but I get nervous about things like beet greens. Wweeeeeirrrddd....
:) 
Honestly, I feel so much better when I "treat" myself like this, instead of my usual sugar/carb fest.
I feel like I think more clearly, am more patient with my children, and my clothes fit better :)

Snowy day

If they would actually keep their snow gear on, we could go play in the snow instead of just staring at it out the window.

Tents

I saved up my Swagbucks for Amazon gift cards and used them to get this double tent & tunnel. 
Which obviously we have tons of room for in our home. 
But it folds up neatly, so if my kids ever actually get OUT of it, I can put it away easily.

Bennett's favorite game

He stands at the top of the stairs and throws the ball down. I stand at the bottom and throw it back up. 
Over and over and over. 
Until one of the grouchy old neighbors comes out and complains about the annoying sound of children having fun.

Receptions

Seriously - could my face BE any rounder?!

 

 

I know what you're thinking - check out the happy smiles on those kids! We just got this thank-you card in the mail from our friends Kiley and Jason after attending their reception last month.  Isn't this a creative idea? I wondered why they had us all pose as we came into the reception.
We've received thank you cards with a picture of the couple many times, and I read it, look at it.... then it goes in the trash.  But obviously I wouldn't throw away this one! I feel like Brian and I need to get married again, just so I can go back and implement all the fun ideas I've seen at receptions the last few years.

Mereditydoo

Just found these photos. Probably about 10 years old  (though I still have and wear that hoodie. Because Tommy Hilfiger is totally coming back in style).

I miss my little sister. 
More than I can explain.

Brian the Ute Fan ?

Guess if he ate them or not.

Portraits of Monkeys

I feel like part of being a parent involves doing things you don't necessarily WANT or NEED to do, but feel obligated to do anyways because....um.... that's just what you're supposed to do.
 Specifically - portrait studio pictures.
You know those ones inside department stores that always bait you in with coupons for free sittings and free 8x10s - then take tons of cute pictures and sucker you into buying some expensive package of wayyyy more printed photos than you'll ever need.
 Then you have these formal, posed pictures of your children that hardly even look like them, because they have to be bribed and begged to pose nicely for 2 minutes.

 But Grandma wants those pictures on her wall.
 So we do it anyway.

 But it will be a long time before we go back, because this was pretty chaotic. Or at least I won't do it ALONE again.

With Brian working during all daylight hours, I had to just suck it up one Monday morning, dress them in their outfits from Nonny, and take them to the department store portrait studio.
With my token coupon in hand. Which the "photographer" asked for up front - just assuming I had a coupon, not even knowing if I did or not.
Then of course someone filled his diaper. Then another someone wouldn't keep her shoes on. Then another kept pulling her hair ties out.
Then their mom had to jump around like a monkey to get them to look at the camera.
And might have also bribed them with Smarties to smile nicely. Which ended up just messing up some pictures because you can see the Smarties in their mouths.

Then the ordeal of listening to the  photographer go through all the package options, when I told him I just wanted the very smallest package, with my 50% off coupon  (because I knew I could just do screen shots off the online viewing album, and I didn't need more prints than just enough to send to the grandparents).
Except these screen shots are a little blurry, of course. Blah.
But you get the idea.
They came. They posed. They got Smarties.

And their mom fulfilled some unwritten obligation to get these types of photos done during her children's monkey stage.

Clif loves me

"Hey Brianna - please put your head next to the Clif bars and smile."
 "Ok. Why Mommy?"
"Because pictures without people in them are kinda lame."

No, not that Cliff - though I did run into him randomly the other day and it was pretty awkward - I mean the Clif BAR company. They just sent me this cute package of full size product samples, tucked neatly in their new compact eco-friendly lunch box. Why? NO IDEA. I've never even been to their website. But I have now, because I sent them a thank you email for being the only company to send out awesome unsolicited mail.

Courtney got beat up by a Mexican

Warning: following post may be construed as rascist. And maybe it is a little. Chill out, don't be uptight.  I'm a very upset mommy right now, because this wasn't bueno. No me gusta. Quiero Taco Bell.

So - I dropped off my darlings at the childcare at Golds as usual this morning. They like it there - very spacious, nice employees, and some fun activities each day. I haven't had many issues there (which is impressive for them, because I'm the type to easilyEASILY have issues with childcares). As I was leaving, two women were checking in a two year old. One was translating for the other. The non-English speaking one couldn't even answer any of the questions from the employee - basic ones like "how old is your child?" Nothing. Not a syllable of English. Ya know... if I was going to go live in France, I'd learn French. Or at least try. Why in the world would someone live in America and not speak the freakin language?! Especially in UTAH - not a border state, not especially diverse... seriously. LEARN ENGLISH. There's my insensitive arrogant rant for the day. Ok, so the women were checking in the two year old (who looked like she hadn't had a bath in awhile) - and they all SMELLED. I left annoyed, but telling myself to stop being so darn judgemental. Turns out I should've listened to my judgemental self.
When I returned after a fun Body Combat class and a shower (because I love showering at the gym - saving on our water bill, and guaranteeing 5 minutes of solitude for the day), the employee brought over a BLOODY-CHEEKED Courtney, and a very upsetting story - So the Mexican two year old was a tyrant. She was wild and violent and didn't understand English. Unprovoked, she scratched THREE children before the employees finally quaranteened her and got her mom out of the gym. She's not allowed back ever. Especially after storming off in an unapologetic huff, or so I was told. I don't blame the employees - they probably were also telling themselves not to be judgmental as this woman was checking in her monster. And honestly, I'm not even that mad. I feel bad for that woman - she's obviously got a lot of problems. I just feel sad that Courtney had such a violent, painful encounter at such a young age. And now she'll probably grow up to be rascist too.

Under that bandage is a wound cleaned with hydrogen peroxide, then topped with triple antibiotic cream. 

First Dentist Trip

She asked the dentist over and over again for a "drink"
(from the water squirter/sprayer tool). She also told him he
had a funny name that her daddy is Brian. 

I know, I probably should've taken her before now... like, um, three years ago before now... but seriously - what's the point of taking a baby to the dentist?! 98% of them will freak out and hate it. The other 2% will sit there happily (after being drugged, of course). I think the AAP's recommendation of taking a child to the dentist around their first birthday was written by someone who had never actually tried to take a child to the dentist. Or it was written by a dentist, who wanted to make money, not realizing it would be more of a pain than it's worth to try to get a child to let him scrape around their teeth.  There's my ignorant schpeel for the day.
So I'm glad that we waited until Brianna would actually ENJOY her first dental visit. Now she's not going to have a fearful aversion to the dentist for her whole life, like so many do. Or maybe she will after we get her little cavity taken care of. Yeah, whoops. Although the doc said it wasn't necessarily a "user error" - might have been a development thing - the outer layer of one tooth had a spot of less density. Something like that. Maybe he was just trying to console me in my grief (because having a child w/ a cavity makes any good mom feel like a crappy mom.)

The gift card, PLUS a goody bag with a 2 new toothbrushes - one
princess, one battery-powered, stickers, kid's floss, kid's toothpaste
 (big size!), lip gloss...This might make up for our dental insurance premiums!

So to make myself sound even worse... my motivation for taking her at this point was a tad self-serving. I probably would've continued procrastinating it if it weren't for all these incentive offers we get in the mail for various dentists around here.  It's wonderful living in a state saturated with more dentists than it needs. So they have to compete, and send out bait. For this visit, we earned a $25 B&N gift card. For Brian's visit (to a different dentist) we got a free electric toothbrush. For mine, I was supposed to get an ipod shuffle, but I wasn't eligible for one of the xrays for another couple years. Lame. Lesson learned - read the fine print beforehand. Anyways, I'm rambling...  Point is.... what's the point.. is there one? What's the point of all this blogging I do, in general? I don't really know. Just blabbing out to cyberspace about our trivial adventures. Oh sheesh I need to go to bed now.  After flossing. 

Birthday package on the way for Grandpa

Giant Moose Attack at Costco

Reality Check

Sleepies

Yo-something

There are a bazillion places in Utah that do self-serve frozen yogurt. It's becoming archaic to go somewhere that you DON'T get to pull the lever yourself.   And they all have their cheesy variation on their yogurt-related title:  Fro-yo, Yogurt Stop, Krave, Spoon Me, Yogurtland, Top It, Golden Spoon, YoWay, Frogurt...

And the YoKell family keeps them all in business! 

(terrible, I know).

Live shot from my run!

So much prettier in-person, really. Absolutely serene and almost breathtaking  (actually the only breathtaking part was running up the mountain trail to find this).



*Later edit:  I'm still just amazed that I can blog on-the-go. That I can press pause on my music player strapped to my arm, take a photo, then text it to appear on my blog. All in 20 seconds. I really love that I live in a time when life is so awesome and documentable. If I lived 100 years ago, it would be really annoying to go running with paper and pencils so I could draw the cool scenes I encountered.

Saturday Adventures

Shopping in Sugarhouse with my trio.  We had a couple hours to kill waiting for the Salt Lake Mother of Twins semi-annual yard sale to be over so I could go pick up my un-sold stuff  (poor planning on my part - should've just sold stuff on Craigslist and not left the house. Never ever a good idea to leave the house. Ever.)
Everytime I get home from a public adventure with these three, I'm always two things:
-Exhausted
-Grateful we're all still alive.

I paid 5000 coins for this?!

Lesson learned, fellow Temple Run game addicts: unlocking the wallpaper is lame. Should've saved my coins for more wings so I can finally become a 10K runner. Ugh.

I have more strollers than I have children.

They've all got a story behind them. The blue single jogger was a group gift from Brian's sisters four years ago. I registered for it at Target on a whim, thinking of course no one would get it for me. I almost cried when it showed up at my door in Provo. The double stroller came next - I won that from a Facebook contest where I had to harass my friends everyday to vote for me to win it. Pretty sure the girl who lost hated me. Or at least her sister did, because she posted, "Lots of people have multiples. That's not a big deal. My sister deserves to win because she's a military wife!" I felt a teeny bit guilty. But that quickly faded away when my Contours II by Kolcraft arrived. Best stroller ever!! That's when I developed my love for swivel wheels. It's all about swivel wheels people. Seriously.
The Jeep double umbrella stroller was a lucky yard sale find. Five bucks. We didn't really need it and have only used it like once. But if nothing else, it will be fun to sell it for more than I bought it, or give it away to a friend with younger twins! The triple jogger is my pride and joy. Hours of research went into that purchase. It was expensive. Very. But worth every cent. And Brianna's double stroller is for her twin baby dolls and was a gift from my dear friend Kdawg.
Sadly, one of these strollers left our family today. I no longer need the single jogger and posted it on Craigslist and KSL. Got lots of calls and it was gone an hour later! Lesson learned - price it higher?! No, I'm glad I gave someone a smokin' deal.
It's a good thing we have two parking spaces in our condo's garage - or where would we park our favorite modes of transportation?! (Brian parks outside :)

So many captions possible for this...

Their first hacking competition

Leave the ee out of the ool.

Brianna received this lovely belated bday card from Cougar today. It features an obese baby saying, "In honor of your birthday I didn't pee in the pool." Brianna didn't quite get it. All she wanted to know why there wasn't any money in there for her.

I fried.

Is it weird that I'm 27 yrs old and I have never ever fried anything myself? I've just never even thought about it. But today when I read the instructions on the back of the falafel package and saw the option of frying in evoo, something inside of me said DO IT! in a naughty voice. So I obeyed. Brian came home during the oil bath and had a minor cardiac infarction. To be honest - they were just ok. I mean, I'd rather save my calories for copious amounts of carbohydrates, but it felt good to be a little rebellious today.

Valentiney

This is the card I sent to my parents - with a free code from TinyPrints.  I love that site - they have great designs and a super friendly customer service. 

Premature

Thought it might be ok to try a park trip. Thought it wasn't too cold. I thought wrong. Fifteen minutes and they were all red and purpley (but of course would've stayed there all day despite the temp. Kids are suicidal like that).

Nightnight books

Brianna was thrilled to receive all these books in the mail from her Grandma McKell. Hopefully we can use them to break Brianna's bad habit of watching a movie to fall asleep. There's my bad mom confession for today.

Beary cool prize

I won this giant valentine bear for placing second at a 5k in Bountiful this morning (19:57 - the winner beat me in 19:54. It was sad. She got a stuffed moose that was even bigger than my bear). Brianna now thinks I'm the coolest person ever because I brought her home a generic medal, tech shirt (I get the kids size instead of my own, because I really don't need my 743rd race shirt) race snacks, and the bear. She says she wants to do races too. Hearing that makes me happier than all the giant bears in the world.




*Sunday night edit: so the kids were totally disenchanted by the giant bear after a short time. And I really don't need more "stuff" in my home. So I took it to Walmart since there was a tag still attached on it. Amazingly, they took it and gave me a gift card! Score! So I bought diapers with it. Because I'm wild and crazy like that.

Twinzzzzz

I take a photo like this almost every day. I never get tired of staring at them sleeping on my lap.

Is it Spring yet?!

On cold winter days when a mom wants to get out of the house, the first place most think of is McDonalds playland or some other free indoor arena. But we've discovered that the rows of spinning office chairs at Office Depot offer just as much fun, without all the nasty germs and wild ruffians at the fast food places.

SO glad she doesn't want Barbies.

I asked her what she wanted for her birthday. She said BALLOONS! So she got some. I hope she's always this easy to please for her birthday.

Who says there's no diversity in Utah...!

Double bath

Not because there's two of them... but because they often take two baths each day.

And I'm not really a clean freak type at all- they just get so messy there's no point in trying to clean them up any other way. So they hang out here a lot. Occasionally, like today, bath time had an abrupt ending when one forgot he was in the tub, not on the toilet. Yeah. Ew.

Stair Mastering

Saving her money

Temp

PEOPLE - 
Temporal Artery thermometers are SO worth it! Expensive, but super easy and accurate. Love it.
(thank you mom!)

Blurry matching twins

You may think- why post a blurry picture?! But seriously- this is an amazingly AWESOME picture, simply because they're all smiling at the camera at the same time!


And yes - matching outfits for the babies. Not an easy feat for boy-girl twins, but I think it's gender neutral clothing that works. What's the point of having twins if you can't have fun dressing them in matching clothes?!

My FOUR year old!

The problem with having children is that now there are TWO days every year that make me feel old - MY birthday, and THEIR birthday... because saying things like "my four-year-old daughter...." make me realize I'm aging. Which is basically like dying. We're all DYING SLOWLY, and birthdays REMIND ME of that! Great way to start off Brianna's birthday post, I know. But thankfully, she thinks it's AWESOME we're both getting so old! Brianna reminds me quite often that she's a big girl now - "...as big as BOUNTIFUL!" as she put it today. She's a fun, smart, sassy, sweet girl. I'm so grateful for my Brianna.

Some formal pictures. Somehow I feel obligated to get photos like this done of my children, though I really don't prefer this type. She's only smiling because I'm dancing around behind the photographer with a monkey on my head. 

Her "cake" I ordered from LearningResources.com (got a Plum District deal for it , so it ended up being almost free). It's fun - she gets to decorate her cake and trace letters on it and do the candles.... lots of sugar-free fun!

We're really looking forward to her party coming up. Lots of friends coming, and I've made it very low-key and stress-free for myself. It's so fun seeing her little face light up as we work on the plans together. And I'm happy because we're keeping the party expectations low as long as we can... because I'm sure in a few years she'll be demanding pony rides and bounce houses.