Busy Busy Busy + Day 18

"If you eat a live frog, nothing worse will happen to either of you for the rest of the day." -Mark Twain

Random Quote for a Random Post. :)

Time is moving speedily on, and it seems the moment I get comfortable with where things are, I blink and I'm behind. Where is the time going?

I babysit. Just about every day. This is most of my excuse. There's a couple in my ward that has a little girl I watch once or twice a week most weeks, and that's been pretty consistent for a long time. The days I don't watch her, I watch my little niece, Zoey.

Isn't she just darling?

My boys + those girls = keeping life busy, that's for sure!

Let's see. What random things can I tell you about?

Maybe I'll just post pictures?

Andrew "helping" Grandpa rake the leaves.

We were driving between our apartment and my parents' house one time, and my mom made me stop on the road (there was no one coming, fortunately) to take a picture of the pretty leaves:

The other day we went to Walmart, and there's a Subway restaurant at the front of the entrance to the store we normally use. Where the Subway meets up with the store, there's this big ICEE bear cardboard cutout-type thing that stands there that for whatever reason, Andrew loves. He usually wants to stop and have a picture taken with it, because one time about a year ago I stopped and took one of him with it. Well, I finally conceded again, so here's that picture:

Gotta love the pose.

These are about a month old, but one time I got down on the floor and took pictures with the boys. Have you all read that article about the mom who decided she wanted to be in the pictures with her boys? It nearly made me cry. You can read the article HERE. Anyway, here are some of my "mom in pictures" pictures.

*sigh* My boys may frustrate me to no end, they may seem like their wrestling with each other will kill one or the other or both (or me!), they may poop and pee everywhere and at the most inconvenient moments, they may throw the worst tantrums, they may talk back to me, they may not eat what I cook them, they may wake up 20 times during the night saying they can't find their special blanket that's still lying right on top of them... but they're mine. And I love them without end. And all those things that I just mentioned (plus a LOT of other things) don't mean anything when one of them smiles at me. Or gives me a kiss. Or hugs me. Or tells me they love me.

Umm... I think that's it for now. Our ward had a Trunk-or-Treat tonight and I took a couple pictures, but I think I'll wait to post them until I get Halloween night pictures of the boys. They're cute in their costumes. :)

Day 18 - Name the tv show you have become addicted to

Uhh... not really any. Ok, I take that back. I really like Once Upon A Time on ABC. And I love Downton Abbey on PBS. I used to be really into Bones, but I haven't watched it in like... two years. House used to be addicting, until it got weird. For a while on Netflix Instant Streaming, I got into Make It Or Break It, I think from ABC Family. But honestly, we don't have cable or even broadcast stations, so I don't watch much tv other than what Andrew watches on the Kid's Netflix. (Like Bob the Builder, Mighty Jungle, Dora the Explorer, Blues Clues, All About Monster Trucks, My Big Big Friend... I could go on forever. And probably sing all the theme songs.)

Secret: I have no interior design skills. I have this dream to someday have enough money where I can hire someone else to make my house all pretty and cutesy and fabulously decorated, but I'll never have enough money, so my family will have to deal with my sub-par talents on that aspect for pretty much forever. Thank heaven for Pinterest, where at least I can get some ideas as to what I can do! If only it would tell me where to put it all...

Swimming Lessons + This Last Weekend + Day 17

"If one synchronized swimmer drowns, do all the rest have to drown too?" -Steven Wright

Haha, good question!

#1 - Swimming Lessons

Alright. Well, even though my adventures at the gym are over currently (I couldn't find the time to go, so I gave up my membership), Andrew is still signed up for 5 months worth of swimming lessons. Hurray! Really, we wanted him to have the lessons over the summer so we could take him to our apartment complex's pool and he'd feel more comfortable in it, but that didn't happen. :(

Andrew has had 5 lessons so far, and he's loving it! I'm seeing a little bit of improvement, mostly that he's not as afraid of the water, he's trying pretty much everything the teacher asks him to do, and he's actually wearing the goggles now. It took my mom bribing him with lunch from the gym's cafe afterwards to wear them, but hey, it gets them over his eyes, and that's exactly what I want.

Here are a couple fun pictures of the lessons in progress:

Working on floating

Going after some rings on the pool's floor

#2 - This Last Weekend

Some pretty sweet things happened this weekend. The first being General Conference. Wasn't it amazing? The bits and pieces that I heard (thank you Andrew and David...) were pretty great. If you missed it or just want to listen to bits of it to learn more about Mormons, click HERE.

The second really cool thing I was able to do was going to an Ohio State football game with my older sister, Susette. It was AWESOME! Our seats were the closest I'd ever been to the field before (not super-close, but still!), the crowd was record-breaking in numbers and was so loud, and we WON! Not to mention that the marching band performed a sweet half-time show, despite a kicker from the opposite team trying to ruin it by practicing right in the middle of the field during Block Ohio, a huge no-no considering the tradition behind Block Ohio AND that the band was just announced to be celebrating their 100-year anniversary! Ok, I am not bitter about that anymore...

Here's a video of the performance. The theme was classic video games (Mario, Zelda, Tetris, etc). Around 6 minutes, they do this AMAZING running horse. I know it's long, but you have to watch it! And to think - they learned this all in like 2 weeks! Crazy!

The third thing we did this last weekend was on Monday, since everyone except my bro-in-law Josh had Columbus Day off of work, the family worked our way down to Hocking Hills to go on a hike in the stroller-friendly trail of Ash Cave. It was beautiful! The temperature was a little on the cool side, but the weather was great and the colors were gorgeous! Here are a few pictures I took:

Haha, Jason asked me not to upload this to Facebook, and I'm not! Muahaha. His face is hilarious, but it's the only one of all three of them looking at the camera at the same time...

Day 17 - What do you want to be when you get older?

I'm currently doing what I've wanted to do when I was younger - being a wife and mom. It's hard every single day, and some days are MUCH better than others, but it's something I know I was meant to do. I don't love every little thing about it, but I love being at home with my boys and knowing I can be there for them.

As for when they get a little older and I'm not taking care of them, I'd like to go back to college. There are a few things I'm interested in: geography, although I'm no good at science; photography, though I've never really been good at that either; and family and consumer sciences, though, again, it's nothing I'm spectacular at. In all honesty, I would want to go back to school for those things so I can learn to be good at them. They're things I'm interested in and currently know just about zilch about. Who's to say you already have to be good at something to learn more about it?

Secret: In the shower, I do everything in the same order every time. If I skip something or do it in a different order, it totally throws me off and I feel like I've forgotten something.

PS. I think I'm not going to do the "me quotes" anymore. It takes too long to do a quote at the beginning, a "day challenge", a secret, AND a quote from my old blog. It's just too much. So it's getting the ax.