Turkey Time!

Ha, seriously this is the best picture I got of the night. For whatever reason I always seem to get caught up in the moments of the holidays and not take out the camera. Weird.

Anywho, this is the best shot I got of the kidos in their Christmas PJs that Roger and Joanne always give them on Thanksgiving. As you can see Katy is pretty excited about them.

It was our year to go to the Beardshall side. And let me tell you that it did not disappoint. Joanne made her famous stuffing....my favorite! And who likes that stuff? I was not a fan until I partook of this goodness! We had potatoes galore! And we also had another famous tradition, RaNae's chocolate pies! I only wish I had room for two slices, by then I was too full!

The pie is on the counter and Katy has her eye on it! Delicious!

On Friday morning I got my BLACK FRIDAY on and hit up the stores. I did not see anything that was just screaming my name so I opted to go to Target and get Katy the Disney princess dolls collection. I was out of there by about 4:45 and then headed to KMart. This place was a ghost town compaired....so nice. I got some Christmas lights. Afterwards I headed home to go back to bed. (Mom spent her Thanksgiving with Britney and her family so I had to go alone this year...sniff, sniff! Ha, next year!) When I got up Katy and I had breakfast and got ready to go to the WVC Christmas Parade. Steve was the headliner this year!

As you can see above, Katy was pretty excited about the whole thing! I guess this parade is held every year. They seem to have a good turnout and it's the parade to bring Santa to the mall for the season. There are a lot of local floats and advertising. There was a lot of little dance companies that marched in the parade. It was cute to see the little kids dancing down the road. Katy thought Steve was pretty great and also enjoyed the fire truck honking it's horn!

Frito Lay is based out of West Valley here in Utah so they had a big truck that they drove down the street throwing out chips. Of course Chester Cheeto was there too. Do you think Katy liked seeing him? NO! She almost cried when he came up and patted her on the head...."No way!" She was happy to get some chips though. Ok I had to laugh because they would open a flat of chips, like the ones you can buy at Costco with the little baggies, throw a few then drop the box on the ground. They dropped one right at my feet. I didn't think twice about it and grabbed 3 bags. One for me, Katy and Steve. I think in my mind I was thinking that I would leave the rest so others could share them too. It wasn't until people were grabbing the flats of chips as if they had gone mad! It was like I was back at Target! I saw a guy walking back to his car with like 4 of these things stacked up....he was having a hard time seeing over it! SERIOUSLY??? Only in West Valley I guess. What happened to the spirit of giving and Christmas? It made me laugh none the less.

Oh yeah....this is what Steve got to ride on! Too cool right? Let's just say that he was super cold afterwards.

We headed down to Gateway after and hit up the Build-A-Bear for there 5$ special....Buddy the Moose. Well that is what Katy calls him. She thinks he is the coolest, mostly because his lights on his antlers light up! We also got some sweatshirts. I LOVE BLACK FRIDAY!!!!!

HA, my Christmas "lights" I was talking about! I can't help myself.....I'm married to a COP!

MERRY START OF YOUR CHRISTMAS SEASON!

Katy Remix 2nd Edition

24 months

Well if you can believe it I am the proud owner of a 2 year old. The new baby smell has faded by now and I am now dealing with the smells of hidden sippy cups and alas poopy diapers! I've hitched a ride on the "oldville" express because this year went by even faster than last year did! It's been an adventure.

I've learned a few things in my 2nd year of having a kido:

1) I've learned that chocolate milk (or nook as Katy calls it) is not a food group!

2) I've learned that NO doesn't always mean NO when she gives you those puppy dog eyes! Man, I am not going to be in charge of the disciplining if we want Katy to be somewhat well rounded!

3) Katy has my heart in her hands, and I will drop anything that I am doing to "holdie" her to her hearts content!

4) Being a mom is the funnest craziest, fly-by-the-seat of my pants time I have ever had! Katy always has me on the edge of my seat with what she's gonna do next. And everytime I turn around she is stripping down to her skibbies and laughing her head off!

I love you Katy....can't wait to see what this next year has in store for us. I can already tell we are in for a pretty fun and wild ride! Here's to you:

23 months

22 months

21 months

20 months

19 months

18 months

17 months

16 months

15 months

14 months

13 months

Mickey Mouse Party!!!

When you talk to your kid about their birthday and about how you are going to have a party and they tell you "Mickey Mouse Party!" that is what you do....have a Mickey Mouse party. Ha, pretty much the extent of our party included Katy getting back into her Minnie Mouse costume from Halloween and making a cake!

Not too shabby for someone who has no idea what they are doing! A little cross-eyed...maybe the ears are a bit big? But I think overall I avoided the cake wrecks website this time....whew!

My friend Nicole and I were going to make cakes together this year, because our daughters are only one week apart. It ended up not working out and I had to go it solo. I kept texting Steve pictures to make sure I was getting it all right! Steve is the Mickey Mouse expert around here. I can draw Yo Gabba Gabba characters all day long but Steve is usually the one who does the Mickeys! Oh and Steve baked the cakes. I guess you can say it was a "Team Beardshall" effort!

We had a "Grandparents" party....and had Mom, Katie and Zach, Roger and Joanne, and RaNae and Ken. Oh and Gus decided to join in on the festivities too!

I LOVE Birthdays so of course had to whip out my probably 2 year old sparkers I used on Steve one year. Katy didn't quite know what to think!

She did think it tasted good though!

She made everyone feel SO good about there presents. Every present was SO cool to her. She made us all laugh when she opened my last year black friday find....a dress up box that only cost me 8$! She promptly got out of her Minnie Mouse costume and into her various princess outfits.

I have to laugh because Katy gives me a run for my money. She is a girly girl for sure. I would have never wanted a princess dress up box! Not sure where she gets that from? :)

She was changing every chance she got!

We ended up watching the Jazz game while everyone was over. Katy watched her favorite Max and Ruby DVDs. Mom got another one to add to her collection! Oh and she changed again!

Thanks again to everyone who came! She is still talking about it so I think it was a success! Happy 2nd Birthday Katy!

Balloons!

Ok, you all know that we do it up National Holiday style at the Beardshall house....so there is always room for balloons! I stayed up the night before in hopes to blow up my TWO bags of 72 balloons! I think I was a little oxygen deprived when I went to bed. I actually had to opt to only blow up about 1 and a fourth bags!

I think it still had the desired effect though. Poor Chuck was having the hardest time that night trying to be good. He wanted to go ape on all those beauties!

I'm just happy to be able to celebrate the allure of the balloon at this years celebration. If you remember, she was NOT a fan last year. No balloons were present there :(

Sadly, I can't say that no balloons were harmed in the making of this moment....because Chuck had that opportunity to go ape on them. Well, you take a look for yourself. This is what happened!

Katy thought it was so funny to see Chuck "take care" of all those guys. We had a great time!

Yo Gabba Gabba!!!!

If any of you know me you know that Katy and I LOVE Yo Gabba Gabba.....so of course we had to go. Let me tell you that the tickets were a RIP OFF (they made me buy Katy a ticket...anyone over one had to have one...even though she sat on my lap most of the time!)!!!! I am only justifying it because Katy's birthday is next week. You know we throw it down national holiday style around here and have to celebrate for at least a month! Steve opted not to go because, as he put it, he would rather poke himself in the eye with a sharp stick!

Katy ate her's but I am posing in my DJ Lance Rock glasses we got. Katy seems annoyed that I am blocking her view!

No Gabba Gabba show is complete without a super music friend show guest....ours was the Aquabats! Way cool, they did a great job. Our dancy dance guest was Megan Joy from American Idol (not too cool when I read that past guests have included Sarah Silverman and Snoop Dog!!! Ha). We also had Biz Markey come and do Biz's beat of the day.

They were all there....Moono, Brobee, Foofa, Toodee and Plex. Oh and DJ Lance Rock. They had a cute balloon segment....

Then released a bunch of balloons! Katy thought that part was way cool.

Then they sang our favorite song. Jump, Shake and Shimmy.....get the sillies out. Katy will dance her head off every time we sing that. Look at DJ Lance Rock...those are some pretty impressive moves! Ha, what's not to like!

And lastly we had to sing....there's a party in my tummy! So yummy, so yummy!

I don't know if too many of my friends enjoy this show as much as Katy and I but I had to laugh my head off when my friend Melynda told me that the song "Don't bite your friends" has been a good one for her son Lincoln! Sadly, they didn't sing that one!

More Forrest Gumping.....

I just felt like running.....

Wise words from mister Gump. And it was a great day to run.....October 30th. I was defiantly feelin' it later though when Katy pooped out and I had to carry her trick or treating! So I actually semi trained for this race (I feel like I haven't really fully trained for anything that I ran this year), and I could tell. I was feeling great.

Of course my running buddy Nicole and I decided to make this our 4th race together this year and we had a good time of course. We had to beat our Ogden time of 2:20...and I am happy to post that we finished this race in 2:09! Not too shabby.

Let me tell you though......although the costumes were SO funny to see (and it was too cold for any of the ladies to dress too scandly....a big pet peve of mine! Hey what kind of animal ears can I wear with my underwear?!? You know what I'm talking about!), I don't think I'll be running this race again. Unless, of course I do some serious downhill training. Nicole and I ran the Provo River Half and I felt really great after that one. Not sore at all. NOT the case this time. I am still nursing my hammered knees. This thing took us up past Sundance and was STRAIGHT down!

According to my Runner's World Complete Book of Running I may be suffering from runners knee: "pain all around and under the kneecap, and stiffness of the knee joint. In severe cases, flexing the knee may produce a painful grinding sensation. Runner's knee results from running too much or too hard, too soon. If you can run through this injury, avoid downhills...." Okay I am almost sure that it was not caused from running too hard or too fast too soon, but because of those cursed downhills! The ironic thing is that I was lovin that steep incline for those first about 4-5 miles but I sure paid the price later!!!!

(Aubry's mom...forgot her name again! (so cute though), Randi, Danielle, Aubry, me and Nicole)

Note to self and lesson learned: DONT run this race unless you have trained extensively on downhill running!!!!!! Again TRAIN HARD on downhill running!

Oh and my favorite costume I saw was a Reno 911 cop. I've only seen clips (thanks to Steve) so I don't know any of the characters names but that one made me laugh out loud! Short shorts = major chafing in the name of a laugh so good job.

Oh oh and, Nicole....I LOVE YOU. Thanks for being my best running buddy even though we live so far away. And thanks to my awesome neighbors Aubry and Danielle (who have been running with me at 5:30 in the mornings) and to my friend Randi who is a running inspiration! Ha

And the rest.....

And of course here is the rest.....

So pumpkin carving is a tradition I don't think anyone can escape. Fortunately for me I like to carve pumpkins, unfortunately for me Steve does not like scooping out the goo!!!! I opted to go with our two pumpkins that we got from Grandma and Grandpa Beardshall and Roger and Joanne. It's cute to each have your own to carve....but let's face it I didn't really want to goo scoop 3 folks! That is the deal I made with Steve....if I scoop goo then he'd carve with me! Ha. It's a sacrifice I was willing to make.

This is what we ended up with....Mickey and Jack. Katy was especially impressed with Steve's Mickey. Thank goodness for the internet and printable stencils. Also thank goodness for my seam ripper....steve used it to poke his pattern! A multifaceted tool! Is that even the correct use of the word? I like that word!

And of course we had to go trick or treating. When we went to Moab we downloaded a bunch of shows for Katy to watch on the iPad....totally cool, worked just like a DVD player. Anywho Steve found all the Halloween episodes of Yo Gabba Gabba, Handy Manny and Max and Ruby. (I have an iPad story for you in a later post!) Needless to say she was pretty excited to go get treats!

And although mom declined a picture I made her get in anyway. She joined in on the festivities.....and we had a BLAST with her. Steve sacrificed and stayed to answer the door (although I think there were alterer motives for him watching the U game!). When we got back we ordered pizza from the PIE and finished the game! Minnie made a great hall that I helped her take care of! Yum....take advantage while you can I say!

Happy Halloween to all and to all a good night! The end!

Pee Pee Potty!

Before I finish catching up on my Halloween festivities, I thought I would tell you about my past week and a half......

We are officially pee peeing in the potty right now. But let me go to last week before this was happening......

Katy had been getting a kick out of taking her PJ's off and hanging out in her diaper. Every morning you'd get her up and she'd say, "Katy cold." Um yeah, it's the end of October and it's been getting a bit chilly at night.

Any who we didn't think twice about it until someone mentioned that we were lucky that she wasn't taking her diaper off. Up to this point I was just concerned that she was getting cold. I didn't think twice about it until it happened! She took the diaper off!

Not only did the diaper come off but we were greeted by a BIG dump in the middle of the floor, oh and a big pee spot next to it! AHHHHH! Seriously??? Well if you thought that was bad, it gets better because Steve decided it would be a good idea to clean it up with paper towels. Which wouldn't be too big of a deal if he didn't put them in the TOILET!!!! Ha, we had a clogged toilet for a few days. I guess no one told him you cant do that. He kept thinking that it would "soften up" and make it's way down. Not the case, we even had to buy a heavy duty plunger to take care of the problem!

Well that was when we decided that it may be time to really start pushing the potty training. She seemed fine with it so we went for it. She went once back in July but I think it scared her so she hasn't been too interested since then. Oh and this is the potty seat Steve and I opted for since neither of us wanted to do the empty kind.

She doesn't tell us if she needs to go but has been going about 4-5 times a day, which has been great because she seems so excited about it. Oh and the last thing I wanted to laugh at is the fact that we asked her if she wanted a treat when she was done...she said no, but told us that she wanted CHIPS! So she has been getting lots of chips this week.

I dont really know what the next step is but I keep telling her to tell me if she wants to go. No go so far. What is the next step anyway? This is my first time! Let me know, and wish us luck!

Witches Tea

My friend Randi had a great Halloween get together for Witches Tea. And we did exactly that....drank tea (caffeine free of course!). She had it set up so cute. It was very dark and there were black lights setting the mood. It's good Nickie brought her camera because no flash was a no go that night. You got some great shots Nickie!

I decided that I am probably not a tea drinker. I know a lot of people that drink them when they are sick but no thanks. I guess I don't like the herbal undertones! But fun idea for sure!

I had to laugh when Sheena picked me up at my house and we drove 4 houses down to park in Randi's driveway!!!!

The party planner herself! We all had to laugh when she was talking up in front of us and one of her warts fell off! Ha, too funny!!!!

It was fun to see how everyone dressed up. Like I said we were enjoying each others company by candle light and black-light so it's funny to see these pictures with the flash! You can really see all the details people put into there costumes! Rosies "witch doctor" was my favorite for sure! Probably because of the scrubs and stethoscope!

Stacy was enjoying her own eyeball!

Oh wait....she was enjoying Randi's eyeballs! She really went all out!

Susie always goes all out for a good photo opp! Oh and Happy Birthday too...you are too funny!

Marge Simpson even joined us! Ha, Jena kept saying how she painted herself with yellow paint!

Fun had by all...I think I finally got all the green paint off myself!

Thanks again Randi, what an awesome party!!!!