Haloweening

First off, I just realized that this is my 700th post!!! That calls for a celebration. A giveaway? That'll happen next week. 700 hundred posts...that's insane. When I first started this blog, I had no idea if I even wanted to be a "blogger". I especially had no idea that this blog would reach so many people, allow me to meet new friends, and connect with other twin moms all over the globe. It's pretty crazy to think of.  This blog has been good to me. 700 kinds of good. 

Anyway...

Our ward had their annual fall/Halloween party/carnival/thing on Friday. Our little elephant and dinosaur were excited to go...

We stopped off at Brett and Jenny's house before we left because somehow she still hadn't seen them in their costumes. The girls danced around, did somersaults and Jenny read them a story.  

Once we were at the party, Jenny's first words to me were, "Brittany! No camera?" WHY didn't I bring my camera?! I live pretty close to our church, so I could have ran home to grab it, but I didn't. Boo. Parenting fail. Here's a few crappy pictures from my ipod though. I mean crappy pictures...

It was fun and the girls love their costumes. I've actually had them hid for a month because the first week we got them, that's all they wanted to wear. Sophie runs around saying "rrrraawwwrrrrr! and Lillian runs around saying "e-fa-fant". It's adorable and I can't wait to take them trick-or-treating! 

Give 'em a vote? Thanks!

The 4th

We had a great holiday. We decided to lay low this year and not fight the crowds during the day. So, we stayed in our p.j.'s, and lounged around while watching the Hot Dog Eating Contest and listening to the very random 4th of July station on Pandora. Later in the afternoon, we set off some smoke bomb and threw some poppers with the girls. That was followed by a BBQ with our neighbors, some sidewalk chalking and watching everyone else fireworks light off fireworks. Fireworks weren't banned, but they were discouraged where we live, so we didn't want to be "those neighbors" but we were happy that there were "those neighbors" around us. ;) We did have a few sparklers and flowers that we light off. It was a few '2 year old' friendly show. 

 

I made some chocolate covered pretzels for the BBQ. I got jumbo twist pretzels, but I didn't think that they would be as hard to eat as they were. They were as thick as the rods, but much, much more awkward and impossible for the girls to bite into. Needless to say, they just sucked off the chocolate and needless to say, it got really messy real quick.

And the girls are looking to their left the entire time because that's where our neighbors were sitting and they love them.

Anyway, here's that photo bomb...

 

I love how much they look like twins in this picture...

And this picture reminds me of this picture from a year ago. Sophie loves her food. 

 

 And for our firework show...

 

Beautiful, right? Sophie thought so.

And one of me and Josh, just because I don't remember the last time we took a picture (especially a myspace-like picture) of the two of us.

 

Hope your 4th was great!

V-day

Putting up a post on Valentine's Day is pretty obligatory for a blogger. Pictures of adorable food, flowers, and other forms of lovey-dovey-ness also help create a stereotypical post. What I've learned over the years though, is that I'm not so stereotypical. I do not like Valentine's Day that much. I do not make cute or adorable food. I do not have that many pictures of Josh and I (although I really want to work on that one. It kind of makes me a sad.) to shower my blog with.

What I do have is 3 people in my family that I laugh with every day. Three people who love me for all my weird quirks that I have to hide from other people. Three people who think I'm their world. And three people who are my world. Valentine's Day is cliche and cheesy and all of those things I don't like, but at the end of the day, I have a lot of love in my life and for that, I am grateful.

I snapped this picture as we were literally heading out the door for church on Sunday. I had wanted to get a cute 'first day of nursery' picture and this is what I frantically got. Oh well, I think these three are the cutest.

And Valentine's Day will always remind me of a time in my life where I suspected there were two. It was about a week(ish) before my ultrasound and I knew something was different. There had to have been a reason that at 11 weeks I could no longer button my pants

And now, that little bit of intuition has turned into two crazy toddlers. What a weird world it is.

Josh bought us a Valentine's Day balloon a few days ago and the girls were obsessed. Sadly all I got was this crappy, low lit instagram picture before I accidentally popped it.

Another thing. I was looking at last year's Valentine's post where I read these prophetic words, "I'll be sure to let you all know when our new bedding is done. It might take a year, but once it is done"

Um.... That bedding is definitely nowhere near being done. I think Josh has given up hope. Lacy, we've GOT to get this thing rollin'....

So there you have it. A post for you this Valentine's Day.

Thankful

I wasn't going to write a "this is what I'm thankful for" post. I really wasn't. It's not that I'm not thankful, but sometimes listing the things that I'm thankful for on the interwebs makes those things feel less special. But as I was thinking about and looking at pictures from the past year, I got quite a lump in my throat.  Last Thanksgiving, my life was drastically different. I finally gave up the hope of breastfeeding my babies. I was still waking up at least twice from midnight to 6 am. I lived in an apartment complex that was unfriendly and unwelcoming. Josh was working a job where (I think) his skills were completely being taken advantage of and he wasn't getting the credit (or pay) that he deserved. I was missing Logan. I was missing my job. I was unmotvated and gaining weight.

But yet, I had so much to be grateful for.

Twelve months later, I wish I could illustrate how different I feel. I realize that not breastfeeding is nothing to ever feel guilty about. If I wake up during the night, it's usually only once. I live in a very, very friendly and inviting area. In fact, Tuesday night was spent meeting a few new people and going shopping, laughing and chatting until midnight with two new, amazing friends that I would consider to be among the 'best' of them. Josh still isn't working his brains like he'd want to, but he's getting paid a good wage and works for a great company with a lot of promotional potential. As much as I still love and miss Logan, my old job and the people I worked for/with, I'm completely content and happy with where we're at. And I'm a lot more motivated and I'm actually loosing weight. Not a ton, but a pound here and a pound there is making me feel pretty great considering I gained over 20 last winter.

Besides all of that, I have my basic things such as my family, religion, a roof over my head, food in my fridge (although, there isn't much of that because Josh cleaned out our fridge and it was pathetic how much rotten crap we had to get rid of. Oops...) and I could go on and on and on.

And just because I feel that every good post needs a picture, here's one. I chose this one because it made me laugh out loud and I thought it was perfect balance to this super cheesy post.  And really, I laughed so hard at it that it's my newest profile picture on facebook. This is so, so typical...

 Image by Lindsey Orton

Ok, so now that we've eaten our pumpkin pie, can I come out of the Christmas closet now? I better be able to because I've been secretly acting like it's Christmas for well over a month now. 

:)

One last thing. You must see The Muppets right now. Stop blog stalking and go see it. I literally laughed myself to tears twice and had a perma-grin the rest of the time. I almost fist pumped, but I thought that was a little weird, so I refrained. I'm not even kidding you guys, it was probably my favorite movie I've EVER seen. Just thinking about the first part that made me cry makes me crack up. 

Best movie in the history of movies.

Pumpkin Walk

Admittedly, my blog sucked during the month of October. How do I know this? On Halloween night, I hopped onto flickr to upload some pictures and I noticed that I had only used 50% of my storage for the month. 50%! That's crazy. On a normal month, I usually hit 90% around the 20th and I really have to start pacing myself (why I don't I upgrade and pay for more storage, you ask? Answer: I am cheap.) Not in the month of October. I had plenty of room (50% that was for you, Fro...) left. So, I uploaded a bunch of pictures just to get them in before the end of the month. I was going to do a huge photobomb with all of them, but I realized that each 'event' has about 9,000 pictures with it, so here's the first batch. The Pumpkin Walk.

 

 

 

 

 

  

Notice Lillian in these next few pictures...

 

 

 

 

And thus begins our yearly tradition of taking the girls to the Pumpkin Walk. I guess I should note that we tried to take them last year, but they had thrown away the pumpkins by the time we went on Halloween! I was heartbroken to say the least.


Don't forget to check out the Giveaway if you haven't already!

Welp, that didn't happen.

It's Thursday. I said the giveaway would be up today. Yeah, that's not happening. I don't want to make excuses, but this week has been a little crazy. Between my girls not sleeping, to a neighbor in the hospital and her girls spending lots of time at my house, to the bajillion loads of laundry I've done, to me trying to be domestic and start planning/cooking meals, to basically me simply having no time, the review part of the giveaway isn't ready. So yeah, sorry people. It's just not happening yet...

In other news, wanna know what the girls are being for Halloween?
 

  

  

Completely cliche and completely adorable.
We had our ward Halloween party this past Saturday and the girls looked darling.
Pair these outfits with the pumpkins I got them and I'm thinking they'll score a pretty decent stash of candy.
Good thing they're too young to protest sharing it with me.

Pumpkins and books

I bought the girls plastic pumpkins last night and got them out this morning to see if a new "toy" would make them happy.

Sophie's ponytail is evidence of how the girls treat each others hair.

Lillian went crazy. She started laughing, screaming and ran right for the door.

 I discovered that she's got quite the Halloween "game face".

She was grunting and breathing super heavy. It was hilarious. I think Sophie got jealous of me laughing at and taking so many pictures of Lillian, so she decided to plop herself right in front of the camera.

After Lillian realized I wasn't taking her outside, she defeatidly (is that even a word???) sat down to read a book. 

   

In a little over a week, the girls can really get dressed up and knock on a few doors. Yep, we're totally taking them trick-or-treating.

I am so excited.