Thursday, November 20, 2008

8 things tag

I haven't posted anything in a LONG time, so I thought I would do a tag that my friend sent me. I will post pictures from the past few months sometime soon (hopefully!)

8 favorite tv shows:
-Psych
-The Office
-The Biggest Loser
-Law and Order:SVU
-Good Eats
-Diners, Drive-ins and Dives
-The Mentalist
-Practically anything on HGTV

8 things I did yesterday:
-went to water aerobics
-went to my parents' house
-went to the park with the girls, my mom and sister
-waited and waited and waited for my new nephew to be born
-got a phone call that he was finally born
-put my girls to bed
-took Wii Music back to Hollywood Video
-saw an adorable picture of my new nephew

8 things I'm looking forward to:
-seeing my new nephew
-Thanksgiving
-going to Utah to see the lights on Temple Square
-seeing friends I knew in England
-Christmas
-tax return time
-getting our 4 people for JD Premium (any takers?)
-Spencer to be off of crutches!

8 things on my wish list:
-I wish Jeff and Jen's family can come to Thanksgiving
-I wish I could travel to England
-I wish Spencer would get a nice raise
-I wish we could buy a house
-I wish someone would come fold my laundry
-I wish there was a way I could snap my fingers and my house would be clean
-I wish I could take more naps
-I wish Spencer's foot will heal quickly!

I now tag anyone that wants to do this.

Tuesday, August 19, 2008

Wow! What a day!

I haven't written in awhile, and I will write about the other things that have happened this summer, but right now, I will just write about my day. It started out very uneventful. Ashley came over and watched the Psych episode that I had DVR'd (I love Psych and I love the DVR!). After she went to work, Kimby watched Little Mermaid (one of her latest favorites). We took Spencer some lunch then went to visit our friend Shari at the Kirby office. After that, we went to WinCo to get a few things. Then I took some flyers for enrichment and our ward activity to a couple of families that we home teach.

Here is where my day starts becoming traumatic. On the way to one of the houses, I saw a squirrel running across the street. I figured it would stop or dart out of my way. Nope! It went right under my van as I was driving and I felt a BUMP! I just felt sick to my stomach. I passed it on my way back to my house and it was so sad to see the squirrel lying there lifeless!

Anyway, once I got back home, Kimberley accidentally dumped out about a third of a (fairly big) bag of mini-M&M's in my van, so I had to hurry and clean that all up before they melted and left a big chocolatey mess. Then we went inside and she spilled about half a can of cream soda on my carpet. A little later she got Spencer's leftover Lime Rickey out of the fridge and somehow it got dumped on her head and Katherine's head. Kids are MESSY!!

I checked my email and saw that I had a myspace message from one of my friends from England (that lives in Utah now) that said to call them. After talking to them for a little while, she told me that she and her husband of 29 years were getting a divorce. Talk about BOMBSHELL! I am in complete disbelief! These are two of my very favorite people in the world. Wow! I definitely didn't see that coming. You hear about people getting divorces all the time, but when it hits so close to home, it really makes you hurt for those people!

I went to Enrichment tonight and then my friend Melanie and I went out and got ice cream because we had both had emotional days. It was nice to get away, without kids or husbands, and just talk. Even though we were gone for just an hour, it made me feel so much better! It's nice having someone to talk to that understands what you're going through! Thanks Melanie! We'll have to do that again sometime.

Tuesday, July 15, 2008

Memories

I'm copying Jen's blog, too.
Here is a fun little game... leave a comment on my blog of a memory that you and I have had together. It doesn't matter if you've known me for a short time or a long time, anything that you remember! Next, re-post these instructions on your blog and see how many people leave a memeory about you. It is pretty funny to read the responses. If you leave a memory about me, I'll assume you are playing and I'll come to your blog and leave one about you. On your mark... get set... blog those memories!

Saturday, July 12, 2008

Raspberries and the Friday Night Art Walk

Thursday night, Kimby and I went to Fred Meyer to get raspberries. We saw grandma (mom) and Ashley buying raspberries while we were there. We have been snacking on raspberries ever since...mmm! They remind me of Washington. We used to go pick raspberries in the summers when we lived there. I also made some raspberry jam with some of them that is really good.

Last night, mom, Ashley, Jamie and Malorie and their kids, and Kimby, Katherine, and I went to the Friday Night Art Walk downtown. It's where a bunch of businesses stay open late and they have art displayed in their stores. They also have little snacks that you can have while you browse through their stores and look at the artwork. It's a pretty smart idea- a lot of these stores were really neat, but I've never been in them and probably never have gone to them if not for the Art Walk. Spencer was working for the Art Walk so we got to visit him for a little bit. There's a little park downtown that has little plaques with names on them embedded in the pavement. Grandpa Brown has a plaque somewhere in that park, so we tried looking for it, but we couldn't find it. Kimberley and Jay had a lot of fun splashing in the fountain they had there; I wish I had brought my camera!

Thursday, July 10, 2008

Everyone has been bugging me about not posting in awhile, so here goes. =) (Just be warned, this might be a long one!) This summer has been a fun, but busy one. I don't even know where to start. We've had lots of fun spending time with family this summer and can't wait for family reunions to spend more time with everyone. The girls have had a lot of fun playing outside in the nice weather.



Kimberley loves going outside to play with the neighbor kids that are all at least 5 years older than she is. She thinks that she is such a big girl. In fact, last night in the van she told me she was big like me and daddy now. Yeah- not quite! =)

MOVIES, MOVIES, and more MOVIES!

Kimberley is proving to be just like he
r daddy. Spencer loves watching movies and Kimberley is the exact same. Every day without fail, she says, "I want to watch a movie!" For a really long time, she watched "A Bug's Life" every single day. Needless to say, we have it memorized. Her other favorites, in order, are Cars, Incredibles, Ice Age, and Mary Poppins.

Speaking of movies, Spencer has been wanting to
go see a movie in the movie theatre for a really long time. I don't really like going because it's expensive, I don't like leaving my girls for that long, and I think it's weird sitting in a big dark room with a bunch of strangers. Well, Jamie and I have been trading off watching each other's kids while we go on dates with our spouses. This past date night, I finally gave in and we went to see Kung Fu Panda. It was pretty funny! I think Spencer and I are going to take turns planning our dates, so he gets to do what he wants, too. =)

4th of July Weekend

I always love it when Jeff and Jen's family come and visit, so I was really excited all week for the 4th of July. They got here Thurs
day night and we just hung out a bit that night and went and bought fireworks for the next night. On Friday, I woke up really early, made hamburger and hot dog buns, hoagie rolls, and cupcakes (yes, I am a glutton for punishment- I just love baking though!), went to the store, ate breakfast, took a shower, and got the girls ready, all before going to the parade at 10. Spencer helped a lot so I didn't lose my mind!

As much as I like going to parades, this one was LAME! Even worse than usual. I didn't expect much, though, because the 4th of July parade is usually the worst one of the year. Kimberley had fun with Kammi and London and getting candy, though, so I guess that's what matters.



After the parade, we went to mom's house for lunch. The kids played in the pool that afternoon and ate popsicles and cupcakes.
Jen and I left for a little while to go to the mall. We tried on clothes and just enjoyed spending a little time without kids for a change. Jamie's family got back from Rupert just in time to have a barbecue. We also made homemade vanilla ice cream with Grandpa Brown's big ice cream maker. Once it was starting to get a little dark, we starting lighting off fireworks. The fireworks this year were actually pretty cool. I usually get bored after about 10 minutes, but we had some good ones this year. We went to the Pocatello Town Square parking lot to watch the big fireworks show once it got dark. Kimberley and Katherine had both fallen asleep in the van on the way over there so Spencer and I just stayed in our van and listened to the music on the radio.

The next morning, I took the girls over to mom's house so Kimberley could have blueberry pancakes with Kammi. Later in the afternoon, Jeff, Jen, Jamie, Ashley, Katherine, and I went to the furniture store to look around for a little while, then went to the mall to get gelato...mmmm. Then we went to GameStop and Jeff bought Rock Band for Wii, so we went back to mom's house and played it until Jeff and Jen left. It was a lot of fun! It was a good weekend.

Katherine's Big Week


This past week has been a busy one for Katherine. She has been taking her sweet time reaching milestones, but this past week she started crawling on her hands and knees (before she just scooted on her forearms and belly), pulling
herself up, and (my favorite) saying, "Mama!" She is so adorable! Her laugh is just hilarious and she laughs at the most random times.


(We got a big package of blueberries yesterday, so I made fresh blueberry pancakes with buttermilk syrup for breakfast. Needless to say, Katherine needed a bath and I needed to do some laundry after breakfast!)

I don't know what was going on, but the font kept changing on me, so this post is all messed up, but whatever.

Saturday, May 24, 2008

Kimby's potty training

Kimby is potty trained!! A couple of weeks ago something just clicked and she started peeing and pooping in the potty all the time! She has a couple of accidents here or there, but that is to be expected. I still had her in a pull-up at night because I was afraid she would have accidents. She always woke up with a wet pull-up so I just figured she wasn't ready yet. Well, last weekend when we were in Lava at Spencer's parent's house, Kimby had an accident in her pull-up before she went to bed. I had only brought one pull-up for her, so my only choice was to let her sleep in her panties and hope that she would stay dry. And she did!! She has slept in panties every night for the past week and has only had one accident. Yay!!

Chris and Mira's wedding

Last weekend, my brother-in-law Chris got remarried. He met his wife, Mira, while he lived over in the Phillipines. She is a really sweet girl and Kimby (and Katherine) just LOVE her!! She is kind of quiet, so hopefully she doesn't get too overwhelmed in the Mangelson family! =) It was nice to be able to go up to Idaho Falls to see them get married. Spencer's brother Sean who lives in Texas was able to come up, too, so that was nice. It was good to be able to spend time with him. We don't get to see him too often. (We missed Anna and the kids, though and can't wait to see them this summer). That night, we went down to Lava to spend the night at Spencer's parent's house and spend a little more time with Sharon (Spencer's sister) and Sean. Chris and Mira came down the next day to go to church with us and then we all had a family dinner before everyone had to leave. It was really fun.

Ashley's Graduation!

My little (okay, younger) sister graduated from ISU a couple of weekends ago!! She graduated in Psychology (Wow! I could never do that!). I can't believe she has her bachelor's degree. She worked so hard and did really well. I am really proud of her. This graduation was a lot better than most of the graduations that we've been to over the years. I think most of it was because mom hired a couple of babysitters for all of the grandkids, so we didn't have to worry about our restless, noisy kids. I feel bad that Ashley was a little disappointed about some of the things that were missing from this graduation that they have had at previous graduations, but at least she's done!! It was nice to spend time with Ashley and my brothers and their families that weekend.

I feel kind of dumb that everyone in my family (my parents, Ashley, and all of my brothers) has a bachelor's degree except me. I just have to keep remembering that I am doing exactly what I was supposed to do with my life. I have followed the promptings of the Spirit and if I had stayed at Ricks (BYU-Idaho) to get my bachelor's degree I would never have worked at Kids Korner and gotten invaluable experience working with kids and I might have never met Spencer and had my two beautiful little girls. The Lord really knows what we need and when we need it. I really want to go back and get my bachelor's degree someday, though. I guess the Lord will let me know when it's time.

Catching Up

Malorie (my sister-in-law) and I have been trying to get together about once a week to let our kids play together. Kimby and Jay have a lot of fun together and I'm sure Katherine and Becky will be really good friends when they are a little older, too. We went to McKee's Pet store a few weeks ago and let the kids see all the animals and play on the little playground there. My favorite were the little baby goats. They also had tiny little pigs that were pretty cute too. After that, we went to Arctic Circle to get ice cream. It was a lot of fun!


Last week, we both packed up lunches and went to the park by our house. All of the kids liked having a picnic at the park- mainly because they got to play right after they were done. They had fun going down slides and running across the little bridge they have at the park. We didn't get to play too long because a school group came to have a picnic at the park, too, and all the big kids came over to play on the playground when they were done eating. We decided to go back to our apartment to play in the yard with the T-ball set and slide that Kimby has. I'm glad that Jamie and Malorie are back in Pocatello so we can do things like that this summer.

Tuesday, May 6, 2008

Funny, funny!

Here are just a few of the funny things Kimberley has said and done in the past few days.

As we were leaving church on Sunday, we told Kimberley that she needed to hurry so we can go to grandma's house for dinner. She got really excited, put her hands in the air and exclaimed, "I can't believe it!"

Lately Kimberley has really enjoyed coloring. She will color any paper she can get her hands on. She always says, "I'm doing my job" or "Look at my job that I drew." I didn't understand why she kept calling her coloring her job until yesterday when it finally hit me. A lot of times when she colors, she will show it to us and we'll say, "Wow! Good Job!"

Yesterday we were at Walmart and I was talking to Kimberley about something. She did a little dance and said, "I'm not listening, I'm not listening!"

This morning we went to go visit mom at Poky High and Ashley came with us. On our way back, Kimberley was talking to Ashley and said, "Do you remember my dad?" Ashley started laughing and said, "Uh, yeah." Then Kimberley asked, "Do you like him?" It took her a long time to respond because we were both laughing so hard!


This is on one of our trips to Utah.
(and yes, that is a Twizzler in her nose!)

Friday, May 2, 2008

What a funny girl

Kimby did some pretty funny things yesterday.

First of all, I went into the bathroom with her because I knew she had been playing in there, so I went to check out the damage. Things seemed normal, besides the fact that there was a puddle of water next to the toilet. I didn't really think much of it until I saw her pants in the bathtub, soaking wet. I asked her why her pants were all wet and she told me, "I washed them!" Wait a second! I didn't hear the water running and there wasn't any water in the bathtub. Then it hit me. I asked her how she washed her pants and she happily replied, "In the toilet!" Okay, so that's gross. But kind of funny, too.

The other thing she did was while we were at a Regional Missionary Training meeting (Spencer's Ward Mission Leader and I'm a Ward Missionary). We got there a little late, so we were sitting in the gym on hard chairs. Anyway, a little while into the meeting Kimby told us that she had to go potty (YAY!), so Spencer took her to go potty. On her way back through the gym, she very loudly and excitedly declared, "I PEED!" Those gyms echo. Enough said. If that wasn't enough, a little while later, she said that she had to go potty again, so I took her. She actually pooped in the potty! So, you guessed it, on her way back to sit down again, she said (again, very loudly), "I POOPED IN THE POTTY!!" I guess we need to teach her there are times when we don't tell people those kinds of things. Oh well, the people around us got a kick out of it.

Thursday, May 1, 2008

Okay, it's official!

I have the best husband in the world!! I was watching Disney Channel this afternoon with Kimberley when the doorbell rang. Usually Spencer rings the doorbell when he gets home to let Kimby know he's home, because she gets really excited and runs to greet him. Since I was expecting him to come home early, I didn't get up because I just figured it was him that rang the doorbell. When he didn't open the door, I decided maybe it wasn't him and I probably better go answer it. When I opened it, I saw a guy there holding these!



He had some flowers delivered to me with a really sweet card! That totally made my day! On top of it all, daisies are my favorite flowers. Between cleaning my kitchen yesterday and the flowers today, I briefly wondered if maybe he had done something wrong that I didn't know about. =) But I decided he is just a really great guy! I love him so much!

Another Yay and a What the Heck?!

Kimberley stayed dry and peed in the potty ALL DAY yesterday! I can't say how excited I am! She has been doing really well lately (knock on wood). She tells me when she needs to go or she just goes in and goes by herself! Hopefully we are coming to the end of this unbelievably frustrating time. Potty training is definitely challenging!

I just wanted to say that I have the best husband ever!! After dinner last night, he cleaned my entire kitchen- dishes, wiped counters and stove, and even swept the floor! He knows that I hate to clean the kitchen so that was very thoughtful of him to clean it without any prodding! I sure got a great guy. I am very blessed to have him.

This morning when we woke up, there was snow on the ground! What the heck?! That is ridiculous. It is the first of May, there shouldn't even be snow in the mountains! Oh well- it doesn't bother me that there was snow as much as it bothers me that it's COLD enough to snow! Just last week the temperature was in the 70's. I want it to be SPRING. I am ready to be warm again!

Wednesday, April 30, 2008

Me too!

Kimberley's favorite phrase right now is "me too!!" Whenever I'm talking on the phone or doing anything, she always says, "Me too! I want to talk to them too!" or "Me too! I want some too!" Yesterday Spencer had a Pepsi, so, obviously Kimberley wanted some too. She took a drink and when she was done, she nodded her head and licked her lips and very seriously said, "That's really good." It was hilarious! Somedays it takes all I have not to just laugh hysterically when she says or does things like that.

Tuesday, April 29, 2008

Yay!

For the past several months, sleeping has been a huge issue with the girls. Katherine refuses to sleep in her crib and Kimberley has been waking up in the middle of the night and either getting in bed with me and Katherine or going to sleep in the beanbag with daddy (he has a hard time sleeping in the bed because of his sleep apnea. I can't wait to get it all taken care of so I can have my husband back!!). This morning Kimby (Kimberley) came into my bedroom and I asked her if she slept with daddy last night. She got a big grin on her face and said, "No! I slept in my bed ALL night!" Yay!! This was the second night in the row that this has happened, so I'm hoping she's finally getting over it! Now I just need to figure out a way to get Katherine out of my bed! All she does in her crib is scream and I can't just let her because we have upstairs neighbors, plus she shares a room with Kimby and I don't want her to wake her up. It is quite the dilemma!