Thanksgiving and Holiday Fun!

This time of year is the greatest. I love that the holidays bring families together. Brian and I are blessed with amazing families who we love to see and spend time with. Thanksgiving was another double even this year. On Thanksgiving day we were at our Oma and Opa's in Toole. The highlight of the day for Meg was playing with her cousins. She was counting the days until she got to go see her cousins. The older cousins were so patient in including Meg in all of their games and Uncle Jeff played with the kids for a couple hours. Then Aunt Lynn brought craft stickers for the kids. Meg, Lucy and Annie literally sat at the table for three hours doing page after page. It was so cute to listen to their conversations and sing Christmas songs together. Meg is so lucky to have girl cousins her age the love all the same things she does right now.

Next we went to Andy and Nat's house for my families annual "Day after Thanksgiving" Thanksgiving. My parents and Sarah were in town for it so it was extra special. Meg calls Grandpa Marchant "The funny Grandpa who thinks I am a bird." This is from a memory she has of when he was here last year. She and Kallie teased Grandpa all day. Nat makes an excellent Thanksgiving dinner.

The next day was the big bathroom remodel with my parents. I will be posting on that in a day or two. We are putting the finishing touches on and then we will post before and after pictures and tell the exciting tale.

Now we are in full Christmas preperation mode. We have decorated our tree and are mostly done with shopping. We fly out for Maryland in a week and a half so we have to be a little ahead of the game this year. I just love Christmas. Having a four year old makes it soooo magical. The elves have been watching her for the last few months making sure she is good so that has made for some fun bribery. She has long debated what she wanted Santa to get her for Christmas. It took us quite a few weeks to convince her that Santa Claus doesn't make the big $300 Pony's that you can sit on. She was positive that if she asked he could surely make it happen. It was difficult to talk her out of it without undermining Santa's magical abilities.

Stay tuned in the next couple days for the big bathroom remodel reveal.

Here are some pictures from the last few weeks.

This picture cracks me up because Meg's face is so intense. Sorry, it is blurry. She was going just that fast when she played Ghost in the Graveyard with her cousins.

Don't think I am a bad mom for laughing when Adin falls. He just kept falling in the same spot over and over again. He would just giggle and get back up.

The crafting fun at Thanksgiving.

These are the tree die hard crafting girls. I could have sat the whole day and just listened to their cute conversation.

Marchant Thanksgiving

These two were inseperable the whole day. They were unified in their goal to run grandpa ragged.

Christmas Tree extravaganza.

These are just a few super cute pictures that I got of the kids while I was trying to get a Christmas card picture.

Hilarious! Check it out!

If you want to see a hilarious You Tube video, check out the link to my brother Andy's blog. I think it is titled, I Feel this Man's Pain or something like that.

Coldplay!

Okay, so this blog may be uninteresting to many of you, but Heather wants me to post something on it. Many months ago, we found out Coldplay was coming to Utah for their Viva La Vida tour. I'm a Coldplay fanatic, so naturally, we bought tickets as soon as they were available, especially because Viva La Vida is one of my favorite albums they've put out. We also got Chris and Jeni to go in with us, which ended up being awesome.

(The stage setup was great . . . I nearly cried when they came out)

Fast forward to last weekend, and the concert was upon us. It was perfect timing for Heather and I, as we both needed a night out away from the kids, and as we needed some serious cheering up after the disastrous BYU/Utah game (which was the same day). I was somewhat worried about how well Coldplay would be live because some of their recent TV performances (SNL, Today, etc.) weren't exactly terrific; during those performances, Chris Martin looked like he was hyped up on Red Bull or something, and his vocals were all over the place. Their live tour album from 2003 is amazing though, so I didn't know what to expect.

(Me and Heather . . . I look like I've had a few Red Bulls myself)

After a very strange opening act, by some unknown artist, Coldplay came out, and they were SPOT on! They sounded fabulous for the entire show. They played all of my favorite songs. Chris Martin was on throughout the concert and very . . . charming (for lack of a better term), and Jonny Buckland's guitar was ringing. This concert was right up there with U2's Elevation tour in 2001. The whole show went by so fast, even though they played a number of tunes. Our seats were in the upper deck, but we were dead center and toward the bottom. The stage set was also cool. At one point in the show, all of the bandmembers disappeared and suddently showed up running up the steps into the crowd. They were fairly close to us. They ended up playing about four acoustic songs in the stands, with fans literally right in front of and behind them. It was unbelievable how good they were.

(Coldplay in the crowd . . . this is about how far away they were . . . sorry our camera stinks)

A huge thanks to Charisse and Kory who watched our kids. Meg and Adin had a blast at their house. Meg apparently made up quite the stories, one of which was about how she doesn't use a pillow for bed (which is complete hogwash).

Thanks to Chris and Jeni for going with us; they made the show twice as fun. I apologize a million times over for my embarrassing dancing. When I go to concerts, I go all out: with my white man's dance and all. Chris was pretty stoic for the duration of the show. Jeni was a crazy headbanger . . . we were going NUTS during Politik. It's the most fun I've had in a long time. I nearly headbutted and fell down into one of the girls in front of us. My wife wanted to stand up from the beginning. For some reason, the people behind us sat throughout the show; we stood anyway. After all, it's Coldplay! My wife is about the cutest thing ever when she dances; I found this out at the BEHS stomps. She'll probably kill me for saying this.

(Me really into a song . . . notice Jenny in the background--she's looking at me with a face of stunned amazement)

(I'm not sure what Chris is doing, but it looks like I'm trying to ward him off)

Here are a couple of videos from the concert. They are from our cheap, digital camera. The picture quality is horrible, and the sound isn't so great . . . but it brings back memories. In the second clip, I'm singing pretty loud, so just ignore that.

Next time Coldplay comes, we're there . . . probably on the floor. Everyone should come--the more the merrier! By the way, we missed you for this one Mig and Mel. Now, if I can see Radiohead and Oasis live, I'll die a happy man.

(Me in sheer awe at what I'd just seen. Sorry all of the pictures are of me--how embarrassing. Heather had the camera)

Quantom and Twilight

Alright I am not a great reviewer of movies like some of my family members, but I simply must post on these two movies. Brian and I went to see Quantom of Solace last weekend. Excellent! I have always liked action films...I think it's a Marchant thing. I had never seen a Bond movie until Casino Royale, which I absolutely loved. I can definately say that Casino Royale is my favorite action film to date. Quantom was equally excellent. I don't know, I just loved it.

Jeni and I went to see Twilight tonight. Yummy! (Hush up all you boys) I really liked it. Jeni and I didn't go with huge expectations that it would be just like the book so neither of us were disappointed. They had to fit a lot of information in fast so that they could get on with the story. I liked almost all of the actors. Bella was perfect. Edward was not what I pictured, but I really liked him by the end. Alice was spot on. Carlisle was pretty spot on for me too. We did have some dumb!!! boys at our showing that thought it was fun to giggle at the corny parts. There were quite a few corny parts, but I am a fan of corny. I have always loved corny chick flicks so this was right up my alley. We both loved the baseball scene and the ballet studio scene. I wanted to blog this so I could see what all the other girls who saw it thought...as for me, I will be seeing it again (possibly pathetic) :0) (Hee Hee, Brian will die when he sees I posted about this)

Happy Birthday Adin!

Adin's birthday was on Sunday. I cannot believe that he is two. Time has flown by way too fast. Brian and I were talking about how crazy it was that by the time Meg was two we were already pregnant with Adin. It is really hard to imagine being pregnant with the third right now. We learned our lesson. I hope noone minds if I brag. Adin is such a great kid. I love his personality. He is really mellow and pretty easy going. He is a total mama's boy. He is a little too smart for his own good and has become such a chatter box. I think he knows that he has me wrapped around his finger. He is all boy. He loves balls, cars, trains and tools. We love him so much! I am converted to little boys. After having Meg, I just wanted all girls. Adin has made it so that if I didn't have another boy I would be sad. Here are some pictures from the day.

I just thought this was a cute pic of the kids playing before church.

Adin got a work bench as one of his toys. He loves it. He is quite good at it and also extremely possessive of it. This toy has been the source of so much contention between him and Meg.
Such concentration. He can hammer a mean nail.

Thanks to Kory, Adin knows that he should be pushed all over the house in this truck. Thanks Kory!
I thought it was totally appropriate to have a train cake. Adin loves trains. He got a train table, but for some reason I don't have any pictures with it.

Cars from Grandma and Grandpa Bay.

Let's be honest, if all Adin got on his birthday was cake and ice cream he would be happy.

He blew out the candles with no problem at all. I knew he wouldn't because he always blows out my matches when I light candles.

Grandpa and Grandma Bay came for Adin's birthday. Since we lived so close to them last year, both of our kids have a special bond with them. Adin LOVES Grandpa Bay. When we were done opening presents, Adin went and got his bink and blankie and cuddled with Grandpa on the couch. It was really sweet. Isn't he adorable. So handsome and for some reason he looked so much older on his birthday. This kid is so active and keeps us on our toes, but we are constantly laughing with him around. He is hilarious. We love him soooooo much! Happy Birthday big boy!

Funny kids

Some funny things have happened in the last day or so. Since I use my blog as a kind of journal I really wanted to record the stories. Hopefully noone minds reading funny kid stories.

Election day

I went to the store with the kids in the morning of election day. On the way home I drove through our neighborhood trying to find the place we were supposed to go vote. Meg wanted to know what we were doing so I told her. The conversation went like this.

Me: Mommy and Daddy need to go vote today.

Meg: What is vote?

Me: (thinking, oh boy how am I going to explain this) We live in a big big country called America. America doesn't have a king but it does have a president. Every 4 years, everyone goes into a place and writes down on a piece of paper who they want the new president to be and that is what mommy and daddy will do today. (Phew)

Meg: (After a thinking pause) I think that daddy should be president because he is so strong and he can do anything.

Me: Daddy would be a good president but you have to have tons of money to run for president.

Meg: (After another thinking pause) Then, I think Grandpa Droubay should be president.

Me: (Laughing) There are only two people who we can pick this time for president, McCain and Obama

Meg: Oh, definately Obama.

Me: (Darn it) Why?

Meg: Because I have heard his name before.

I guess one person in our family got what they wanted.
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Every mother's dream...but not mine

I potty trained Meg at 23 months because I new that Adin was coming and I wanted to give her enough time for it to really stick before he was born. Everything worked out as I planned and ,truthfully, she did really well. Since I had never potty trained a kid before, I learned how hard it is and how much patience it takes. After having Adin, I new that I would wait much longer to potty train him just because I wanted to avoid it as long as possible. Plus, I figured if he was a little older it might be easier. Now, I don't know what to do.

Everytime Meg gets in the bath she has to pee first. I think it is the sound of the running bath water or something, but she never fails to need to go. Adin has caught on to this. Yesterday, I was getting a bath ready for just him and he pointed at the potty and said "Adin, potty." I pulled out the potty seat and set it on the toilet. He sat there for a while and after a couple minutes he did pee in the potty. I profusely praised him just like I was supposed to. Now, if you remember I blogged about him doing this a month or so ago, and again I just thought it was a fluke. Well, this morning when I went to give both Meg and Adin a bath, he wanted to sit on the potty again. This time as soon as I sat him down, he gave this concentrating look and then went pee almost immediately. Praise again. About 20 minutes later, he told me he wanted to go potty again. I was thinking that there was no way he actually needed to go, but I let him sit there again. He concentrated and went pee again. Yikes. Now I don't know what to do. I really can't handle the stress of potty training right now, but I don't want to let a golden opportunity by. At 23 months, Meg was a lot further ahead verbally than Adin is. I could explain things a lot better. I guess I'll just give it a few more days and see what he does.

More babies

A long time ago, I talked to Meg about what other baby names that we liked. So, for a long time, she has been talking about baby Gracie and baby Derek. Our funny conversation went like this (keep in mind this is very out of the blue, there are no immediate babies on the horizon in our family).

Meg: Mommy, why did Heavenly Father build us just one more boy and one more girl for our family.

Mommy: We don't know what he will send us. We just have to wait and see. We could have one boy and one girl or maybe two girls or maybe two boys.

Meg: Yuck, two boys would be boring.

Silence

Meg: Maybe Heavenly Father will build us lots and lots of more babies.

Mommy: (No way) Why?

Meg: Because I just looooove babies.

I just thought that was a cute story.

Anyways, I just had to record those stories. It seems like you forget so easily if you don't write them down. I am loving the ages of my kids right now. There are all sorts of funny memories in the making. You just never know what they are going to do next. :0)

One more thing

I was reading comments on my previous post and realized I didn't even put what Brian was doing. He will be the Social Service director at the Rock Cove? Nursing Home. It definately isn't an exciting location being a nursing home, but he doesn't do any of the nitty gritty work you think of when you think of a nursing home. He is required for admitting people, assessment and coming up with a plan for how long they will need to stay. He meets with families a lot and takes care of any legal arrangements when people pass on. It's an administrative position so the majority of the time he works in offices and it will look really good to help build his resume. The two guys he interviewed with seemed really cool so hopefully he will like it okay. We'll see. We're just excited it's a job. ;0)

Very, Verrrrryyyy, Happy Halloween and TONS of pics

I hope everyone had a fun halloween. We definately did. To begin with, I have been given permission to blog that Brian got a job!!! Yea! This month of joblessness has been rough. Brian was applying for tons of jobs and nothing would come through. On Tuesday of this week, Brian applied for a job that is literally 2 minutes from our house and paid better than all of the jobs we had applied for. On Wednesday, they called him for an interview. On Thursday, he interviewed. On Friday, he got offered the job and on monday, he starts. It was fast. Brian feels under qualified for the position so he is worried about starting, but I know he will do an amazing job. We are so relieved to be moving on. We have amazing family members on both sides that truly supported and carried us through this mess. Thank you! We are very blessed. We also feel that everything about this job is more perfect for us than any other job we were interviewing for. So we know that the Lord blessed us.

Unfortunately, Brian caught another stomach bug. Argh! He started with the nausea/vomiting on Monday night and has been horrible all week (yes, even when interviewing). As soon as he started feeling sick I made him stay in our bedroom and follow him with disinfecting lysol spray any time he comes out. It is really pathetic, but I just cannot fathom me and the kids getting the bug again. We hoped Brian's new bug would just be 24-48 hours, but it is still going on. We are hoping and praying that it will be better by Monday for his first day of work. Yikes! Keep praying for us.

Besides that really great job offer phone call, the rest of halloween was really fun this year. We were just bumming around in the morning and I wanted to make the day fun. I took the kids to the grocery store to try and find a special halloween treat. We ended up buying sugar cookies to frost. It was a lot of fun and the kids loved it. Meg kept saying, "Oh, this is the best day ever." It is amazing how messy of a project that it. They made the mess in about 10 minutes and it took me over an hour to clean it up. Then we got the kids all geared up for trick or treating. Since Brian was so weak, we just drove up to a nice neighborhood in our ward. By the time we had done about 10 houses, the kids were pooped. They have nasty colds and are worn out anyway. We decided, against all of both of our halloween beliefs, to go to our wards trunk or treat (sorry, trunk or treats just aren't what our halloween memories are made of). It was good because Brian could just sit by our car and I could take the kids around. They got WAY too much candy and it was over quick.

Here are a ton of fall/Halloween pictures. I'll start with Halloween day.

Meg picked a poodle costume pattern about 3 months ago. She kept telling people she was going to be a ploodo which sounded more like pluto. It was pretty cute so we didn't really correct her. She did get it down in the end.

Adin was a lion. He is totally out of his photogenic stage. I used to be able to tell him to say cheese and he would smile this perfect beautiful smile. Now....not so much. He really didn't want his hood on, but I did get a really good mad lion face.

Right before we left to trick or treat.

Trick or treating. I got them these super cute battery operated latterns. They were a big hit.



Adin was an adorable trick or treater this year. I always think it is so funny to watch them at his age because he has no idea why everytime we knock on someone's door they give him candy. He caught on very quickly and even got down saying "tick or teat". He was also extremely spacey. He would walk so slow in between houses just being distracted by looking at different things and he refused to hold our hand. It was slow going.

This is really how Meg looked when we got her home. The definition of pooped.




Adin saying some of the words he learned tonight and some other wierd things I told him to say. Meg reciting how she trick or treated. I am kind of bummed that the lighting in these was so bad, but what they say is cute.



These pictures are of last year's halloween. My mom couldn't find pictures of their last year's costumes so I told her I would post a few of them.

These pictures of Meg are weird because she looks noticably younger and it seems like yesterday.Here are a few pictures from our cookie decorating extravaganza. Meg did such a good job. She is so grown up. She was very meticulous about all of the steps.
Adin, was not so meticulous. I love this picture because he has his concentrating face on.
Adin getting ready for the after cookie decorating bath.
I wanted to take Adin and Meg out to play in the leaves outside our building one afternoon. We pushed all the leaves into a pile and then would have leaf fights (throwing leaves at each other).
Then we buried each other.

Then, since we live in a complex where everyone can see you when you are out playing, we were joined by many of the neighbor kids who wanted to get in on the action.

This is kind of random. Meg really wanted me to carve a Ariel pumpkin at the Droubay Halloween party. This party is one of my favorite events of the year and this year was no exception. I am not a very careful pumpkin carver so this took a lot of concentration for me. I now swear I will only to jackolantern faces from now on.


My hot husband at the party. Isn't he handsome??

Well, that is it. You probably thought you would never get to the end. I just love taking pictures and I love fall. You put those two things together and you get TONS of pictures. :0) Happy Halloween!!!

Fall Fun!

Brian will always tell you that Halloween is his favority holiday. It has been since he was little. I just love autumn and anything associated with it. I love the leaves falling off the trees. Since we live in this condo, the association takes care of leaf removal so we can purely enjoy the leaves. I love sweater weather. Plus, it is the begining of the holiday season. October is truly one of the best months. We try to take advantage of the fall festivities when we can.

A couple weekends ago, we took the kids to Farm Country at Thanksgiving Point. They have been there a lot of times, but they had a Halloween carnival thing going on. The kids had a lot of fun.

Then this last week we went to a Hee Haws corn maze. There were two corn mazes there. We split up and tried to race to see who could finish first. The first one was pretty easy. Brian and Adin won, but Meg and I were really close behind. By the time we got to the next maze it was quite a bit later and colder. We wandered for quite a while and Meg and I came out the entrance. We layed down on some hay and waited for Brian and Adin. Meg fell asleep by the time I looked up to see Brian and Adin come out the entrance as well. We COULD NOT find the right way out. Brian insists he went on every path of that maze and, of course, it drove him insane to not finish it right. I would say that Meg and I waited about a half hour for him (by the exit) and the whole time we waited not a single person came out the exit and there were a lot of people in there. Brian really wants to go back and try it without kids. The kids were definately ready to go home. Here are some of the pics from those trips. Hopefully we'll find at least one more fall-ish thing to do before Halloween.

Meg with her vampire teeth.

Let's just say that our kids don't currently show a lot of promise when it comes to aim and throwing balls. Brian is really working on it though. :0)

By far, their favorite part.

I always love the cornboxes. We went in this corn box before we did either maze. When we got home at the end of the night, Meg took her shoes off and between the two shoes she had about a half a cup of corn in her shoes. I have no idea how she walked all that time through the mazes without complaining about it. That would drive me crazy.

I love these big slides. This year they had you sit on a sack. I don't know why they did for sure, but it made you go way faster. There wasn't enough slide at the end so inevitably we would all slide on the bumpy ground many feet after the slide ended. Ouch.

I have never ever ever seen a pig this huge. The picture doe not do him justice. He was massive. If he sat on me, I would surely die. He had to be over 1000 pounds. Insanity. Now for a funny story. To go along with all of his poundage, lets just say that this pig was a very big boy. I mean big in the way that you know that he is a boy pig and not a girl pig. Brian was making funny comments about that when the pig's caretaker came over to the pen. We started asking questions about the pig's age, weight, and so on. Another little family came up and started asking questions. The husband asked the caretaker, if all pig's rear ends hung off their bodies like that. Hee Hee. You should have seen the look on the caretaker's face. He just stuttered around and finally said, well, that isn't exactly his rear end. It was dark, but when the man finally understood his mistake his face and his wife's face turned bright red. Brian and I really tried to hold it together and, thankfully, we were able to until we were out of earshot.

At least one person cooperates with my picture taking. Thanks, Brian!