A date with Grandma

Yeah Christmas is over. Joe, my in-laws, and I took Grandma C to the Rockin R Ranch last night. It was wonderful. Same old bbq meat, same old show because they brought back their fiddle player. Through out the show I kept glancing at grandma and she was smiling through the whole thing. I was so happy to take her before she wouldn't be able to do it.

Christmas was same old same old. Nothing too spectacular happened. The best part of it was playing Mormon Mad Gab with Leaner, Abenanna and the rest of the family. Christmas isn't Christmas without laughing so hard you cry.
Here are some pics of recent stuff.


Life size wooden Simpson family I made for Malcolm.



LIfe size wooden Santa kneeling before the manger I made for our yard.



Quintin has two teeth!!



Baby's first Christmas.

A Blog

Collin Quintin and Santa ( Santa is actually the boys' grandpa Simper) How lucky to have Santa be your grandpa

A day on the Harley!

Quintin's first solid food. HE LOVES FOOD!!


Two naughty boys plotting a new scheme for mommy.

I need to blog more. I think my mind gets clearer when I write down the days adventures so I don't linger on them...

I have been baby sitting Madison a lot lately. She is so much fun and yet is so naughty around Collin. Collin will steal a toy from her and gets in trouble. I tried spying on them the other day and Madison holds the toy in front of Collin's face and taunts him. I think she knows he will get a time out an enjoy it. Girls can be so mean.

I have also been painting like a mad person for the last 2 weeks. I have completed Malcolm's Life size Simpson Family Christmas for his front yard. Pictures will be up in a couple days. I also painted a life size Santa Claus kneeling before the manger for my own yard. That one has always been one of my favorite pictures for Christmas.

I sent out my Christmas cards and when I got to the last 10 I realized I didn't have enough pictures for the cards....sorry to those of you who did not get pics of the boys.

Poor Joe has been handcuffed to his desk the last week. He has been pulling 10-12 hour days and has been in the office all weekend. Hopefully the company will be friendly once this project is done and maybe give him a little more time off or something.

We had our ward Christmas party on Saturday. It was amazing. It was outside on someone's farm. Everyone was dressed up in Bethlehem attire and the church had set up a market place for all of the food and "wares". As you entered you were given a bag of "gold" to purchase you cheeses, soup in a breadbowl, little toys for the kids, and your frankincense and mur ( cute little bag with potpourri). There was a petting zoo for the kids. When it got dark there were a few fire pits and tiki lanterns lit. It almost looked real in the dark.

A Day

Wow once again it has been awhile....
Should I write about what has been happening lately or should it be about just today? I will start with today to get it out of me and then go on with other things if I am still awake. Woke up this morning around 6 AM for a silly little baby that just doesn't sleep through the night. Went back to sleep again around 7AM for about a half hour til the 3 year old beast child woke up. We slowly got dressed and I looked through pictures that I needed to mail to my sister in law by the end of today. Finally jumped in the Durango around 10:30. Before going to Walmart to make copies of pictures, I had a strange feeling to see Grandma C first. I knock on the front door and it looks like Grandma was in a boxing match with Tyson and didn't win.

She tells me that she fell flat on her face. Her glasses had hit her around the eyes. She also caught herself a little with her arms (which were also black and blue) Naughty grandma didn't tell anyone about it....until later when one of her friends had visited her and called my mom..."Grandma fell today, just thought you should know". Anyways mom wasn't to pleased with grandma. (Grandma told me I could put this pic on the blog)



I tell grandma I have to leave to Walmart and she wants to go with me. So why not? While I am copying pics, Collin is throwing his shoes by kicking them off and baby Quintin is screaming because the cart isn't moving. Once I place my order there is a sign about 10 feet away from everything saying that the one-hour machine is broken so I can't pick them up til tomorrow (Sorry sister in law but I will have to mail them tomorrow)

We finally get out of Walmart and sweet grandma c offers to buy us lunch from Sonic. We get food and take it to grandma's house. After lunch, I go in the back room to look at all of the cool 80's flicks and come back out 5 minutes later. "Grandma, where is Collin?" ......She says she hasn't seen him. I check everyroom in the house, the backyard, the garage....the front door. I hear a low rumbling noise, and there is my sweet angel child sitting in the driving seat of the Durango with the engine turned on, trying to work the stick shift. That was 3 strikes for the boy. He had stolen my keys, snuck out of the house and started my car. After a small moment of "thank you god, he isn't hurt and hasn't hurt anybody" I pull him out of the car, a few firm pops on the rear and a full 20 minute time out in Grandma's hallway.

We go home....finally nap time. I needed this nap. In 5 minutes Quintin is out. In about 15 minutes Collin is out. In 3 more minutes, mommy is out. In less than 30 minutes Collin decides that nap time is over and wakes up the baby who then wakes up mommy. Needless to say, Collin spent most of the afternoon in his room playing away from mommy. My good friend comes over around 6PM and offers to watch the boys while I take a walk to gather my brain into one piece again. It was a nice walk but I didn't take full advantage of the time she offered....for some reason Collin is very mean to her. No idea why. So I walk around the block and hurry back.

Finally 8PM. Bedtime. Collin is in bed, I watch transformers with my friend. Quintin decided he was over tired and didn't go to sleep til about 10PM. At 11, it is time for bed for mommy. I go to tell Joe goodnight. Just as I was about to leave the office I look up to see Collin standing at the doorway throwing up everywhere.....I start cleaning the floor, Joe cleans the kid. I go in the bedroom and there is a wonderous trail leading all the way to the bed where there are several lakes of turkey, mozerella, pickles, and cucumbers. After cleaning and then dealing with Collin puking one last time, he is sent to bed....

So here I am blogging in the middle of the night waiting for my little man to go to sleep so that I might get a little sleep before the baby wakes up. Well off to bed , I will blog soon about more fun and meaningful events later.

ARRRrrrrr!!!

Quintin has hit the 6 month mark. He is an incredibly long baby at a whoppin 98% percentile. Guess he is not taking after me. Quintin is so funny, he laughs at everything. He also very clingy and cries huge if no one is in eyesight. Rather annoying sometimes. He LOVES Collin. When Collin walks in the room he immediately starts smiling and encourages any naughty behavior out of Collin. I know that these two boys are going to gang up on me.

Collin and I have been watching Madison. They are now really good backyard friends.

Malcolm had his annual Halloween party. We went as a family of pirates. Mainly because we had the pirate stuff already and we couldn't spend any money on costumes this year. Unfortunately every other person was a pirate so we didn't feel very original. Except we were the only group that had real swords and Joe and my garb was real.

Baby Max has turned One this weekend. Hooray for Max. Poor kid had an ear infection this weekend which made out for a very unhappy baby. He devoured his birthday cake and sadly I forgot my camera. :(

I was tagged!!

Darn you Leaner for "forcing" me to blog!!
Middle name GENEVIEVE

G-Ghost. I have only told a few people this story. Growing up and even now I believe there is a very negative "spirit" that dwells in my bedroom at my parent's house. I will no longer sleep in there whenever we stay there. I believe it has something to do with the old dresser and especially the mirror attached to it. Get rid of that and I probably would have no problem with the room. (I HATE mirrors in the dark!) A couple years ago I tried sleeping in there and felt a horrible presence that was pushing on my chest as hard as any human could. I said "GO AWAY!" in a very direct, not yelling tone, (the kind you use when you are getting your point across with your kids) and it went away immediate. Since that night I haven't "felt" anything in there but I still will not sleep in there.

E-Elise is my name. I always though it would be prettier if it were spelled Elyse but I don't think I would ever change it. I was named after a sweet old lady in a trailer park that my mother would visit teach. My only memory of the lady is that she had a candy bowl in the middle of her coffee table with ribbon candy in it. If you took a piece, all the candy would come out in one huge chunk cause it was all fused together from old age and the humidity (yuck!)

N- Naughty. Sad to say sometimes I have a really naughty mind. Always joking of course whether it by sexual or violent. It is probably something I should work on before my kids get much older. Remember the movie "sixth sense", when the dead boy is walking down the hallway and says "Wanna see where my dad keeps his gun?" and then turns around and the back of his head is blown away? I saw that movie in the theater and I was laughing so hard at that part and people were looking at me funny. And what can I say but boobs are funny especially when you get me, leaner, and abenanna together.

E- Eventually. I am the biggest procrastinator. My best writing, homework, cooking, whatever, happens if I wait til the last minute. Sometimes it bites back when I do this but not enough to make me quit.

V- Violin. I have always wanted to learn to play the violin. Joe's dad gave me his old one but I just haven't taken the time. I just need to get off my butt and give out some effort.

I- Insecure. Sometimes I have a hard time believing in me. My weight, school, did I do anything today? If I did something is it good enough?

E-Eccentric. I am weird. Weird foods, colors, movies....weird is just more interesting.

V- Virginia.....hmmmm never been there.

E- Endings. I like endings. The ending to Harry Potter (awesome and worthwhile) The ending to Titanic.....sucked, I can't believe the old lady threw that necklace off the ship while these poor scientist guys were looking so hard for it. Ending to Top Chef this year was good but I wanted the gay guy with the mohawk to win. Never Ending Story is such an awesome movie, part 2 was pretty alright.....don't watch part 3 unless you want bad acting including a young Jack Black. Ending to "Paying it Forward", I still cry every time. My middle name is way too long so I am happy for this ending...

I didn't want to blog this until I knew that he had called everyone himself. I didn't want someone to read this and be sad and say "why didn't he tell me?"

Anyways Carter is moving. He moving up north to live with Alexshuman. I am both happy for him and also incredibly sad. He is the first one in the Taylor family to move out of this state. I don't know how to react or what to say. I actually feel a little numb whenever it is brought up. I want to support him but this feeling won't go away.

I know that we are four years apart in age but somehow we were always close. When we were kids he would hold me down and do the loogie thing where you spit and then suck it up before it would hit your face. As soon as we heard mom in the driveway, he would pick me up and immediately start apologizing and say "I am so sorry, I love you." (only to repeat this again after mom would leave us alone again) In Junior High I would sneak in his room after he left for school and borrow is clothes without asking. ( don't know if he knows about that one)

When I was a freshman in high school, he was a senior. Everyone said I looked exactly like him and called me "little carter". It took 2 1/2 years for that nickname to wear off, even after he left highschool. But because I was little carter, I never got thrown into the trash like the rest of the freshmen.

At one point when I was going to ASU, Carter was my room mate. Not for very long but it was entertaining. At the Fiesta Bowl parade, I gave him one of my trumpets and showed him how to play a couple notes so I could sneak him into the Play It Again Band. No one new he was faking except me and the old band director from CHS.

He is always the first to know big news when it comes from me. He was the first to know that I was getting married. He was the first to know that I was pregnant for both boys.

Collin loves Carter. Every day he asks if we are going to see him or call him. Carter was also the first person to make Quintin laugh.

I hope he finds whatever it is he is looking for and be happy. I know that his current residence and job are weighing down on him. Carter if you read this, know that I support your decision and I love you, even though I haven't been acting like it.

Please try this one!!!

I found this on Amie's(?) blog. I don't think she knows who I am but I couldn't resist this one.

1. YOUR ROCK STAR NAME: (first pet & current car)
Putty Durango

2.YOUR GANGSTA NAME: (fav ice cream flavor, favorite cookie)
Cherry Garcia Samoas

3. YOUR "FLY Guy/Girl" NAME: (first initial of first name, first three letters of your last name)
E-SIM

4. YOUR DETECTIVE NAME: (favorite color, favorite animal)
Blue Dragon

5. YOUR SOAP OPERA NAME: (middle name, city where you were born)
Genevieve Tucson

6. YOUR STAR WARS NAME: (the first 3 letters of your last name, first 2 letters of your first)
Sim-El (sounds spanish :) )

7. SUPERHERO NAME: (2nd favorite color, favorite drink put "The" at the front of it)
The Green Dr. Pepper

8. NASCAR NAME: (the first names of your grandfathers)
Max Lynn

9. STRIPPER NAME: ( the name of your favorite perfume/cologne, favorite candy)
Obsession Mounds (Ha Ha!!! I was laughing so hard when I wrote this!!!!)

10.WITNESS PROTECTION NAME: (mother's & father's middle names )
Marie Lee

Mamasaysom: respect

My mom raised three boys all of them almost exactly 2 years apart. (and she raised me but I didn't come til the end and four years after the last boy) How did she do this? Right now I have two boys. Two very high maintenance, intelligent, energetic, drive me crazy boys. And they aren't even old enough to gang up on me yet. I highly respect my mother on her ability to get along so well with kids. My boys love being with her. Again I ask though, how did she do this with out losing her mind?
(pics are of mom with Collin and Quintin)

oh dear

Friday was the CHS homecoming. I took the boys to watch the parade. Collin loved the fire trucks and he kept yelling at the passerbys whether they had phones or not. He is so weird.
Later that night I let the geek in my free and joined a group of old band nerds at the football game. My band director rog was there, wow except for greying hair he hasn't changed at all. About 20 alumni showed up to support the CHS mini band (this year there is maybe 30, when I was in highschool there was about 120!!) Only about 5 of the alumni brought their horns to play....oh well it was still a good time.

I need advise about something. Collin found his big bird stuffed animal a couple of days ago. I was sitting on the couch feeding Quintin, and Collin sits next to me, lifts up his shirt and began to attempt to breastfeed big bird!! I told him that only mommies do that but he doesn't have a clue about gender roles. Should I worry about fixing this or just let it pass (or maybe hide big bird, since it is the only toy he has ever tried with?)

So much to Blog, so little time.

Wow, it has been a while and so much has happened.
On the 29th of August the power in Coolidge went out. We were one of the lucky houses and had power back within a couple hours while everyone else had to wait a couple days. I housed Grandma C and she sat and worked on Christmas decorations while Collin jumped all over her. She keeps offering to babysit him but I just don't feel safe doing it. I left him alone with her for about 20 minutes while I ran to the store and Joe had to rescue her because he was throwing things at Quintin and her! Uhhhgg, I have a naughty child. Polly and Craig also spent the night and we had a little slumber party.

On Friday, the power slowly started turning back on for people. Our little family needed to leave to go to the Whiting Homestead for Collin's birthday, so we left Grandma a key to the house til her power was on. Note to self: don't let grandma do your dishes while you are gone, can't find anything now.

For Collin's third birthday we went to the Whiting Homestead up by Show Low. Sooo pretty, lots of sunflowers. We stayed in the Simper cabin with most of our family so Collin had the nieces to run around with. We went exploring and found a neat cave and also a dead cow....very exciting. Sunday night we had a BBQ and birthday cake. Collin actually blew out candles this year. On Monday we had to drive back to the hot so we chose to take the long way home. We followed my parents East towards New Mexico and got to hike most of the Catwalk. Unfortunately we didn't get home til about 10:30PM and we had some seriously cranky kids by then. Collin was crying for "collin's house" right when we left Safford and there is still about 2-3 hours from home. Oh well, it was still a nice drive.

Baby Quintin is growing like a weed. He is about 1 inch shorter than his cousin max who is now almost 11 months old while my baby lumpy is only 4. It's not that he is fat, he is just really big. Collin on the other hand, we found out is actually tiny. He in the 48% on weight and 25% on height. Poor kid, I was hoping he was going to get his daddy's height 6'6, not mine 5'1 (on a tall day!)

Here are some random pics from the trip.

Twos are almost over

How do moms do it? This toddler stage is making me go crazy. Ever since we moved Collin has been clingy to the point of screaming and tears. He has never been clingy, just runs up to strangers and wants to go home with them. Not that that is a good thing but come on, what is going on with my little man? He has reached new levels of silliness that I am not sure how to deal with properly. I have little patience anymore and it something I REALLY need to work on.

Last Sunday I woke up and Collin was in the living room and had popped off half the keys to Joe's laptop. I was so angry I couldn't calm myself to take a picture of the mess he had made. Which is something moms are supposed to do so that can laugh later right? I have learned that I really can not leave Quintin and Collin in the same room together. Quintin was crying the other morning and I had gone to the bathroom and left him in the front room with Collin. Collin wanted to "share" his raisins to make Quintin stop crying. Well, it worked in some aspect. I came in the room to find Quintin gagging and gasping, flipped him over and two raisins came out. Yes, he was trying to be nice but I have told him several times that Quintin doesn't eat Collin food yet.

Arrrggg. What does this little kid want or need. Maybe he needs more structure or something but I hate schedules. No day is ever the same around here I am not sure how to make it work. Maybe he needs to start preschool but I don't know if he would let me leave him at one. That and most preschools require three year olds to be potty trained. My little man just won't do it. He has absolutely no desire to sit on the toilet long enough to let anything happen.

Oh well, terrible twos are almost over right? One more week and he will turn three and be the perfect angel.....(or so I have been told)

8 things about my marriage.

I didn't have anything to blog about so I did Leaner's thingy from her page out of boredom.

Eight Things about My Marriage

1. Where did you meet your husband?
Camp Raymond BSA Scout Camp in Parks, AZ

2. What was the first thing you said to your husband?
How's it going....wow, you're tall.

3. Where was your first kiss?
On my couch in my nurse's cabin at camp

4. Did you have a long or short courtship/engagement?
Let's just say we never went on a date. We were friends for about 4 weeks. Suddenly got engaged the next week and were married within 5 1/2 months.

5. Where did you get engaged?
On the same couch we kissed on. A year later, I took that couch from the scout camp and gave it to Joe for our first wedding anniversary. Boy it was an ugly couch.

6. Where did you get married?
Mesa, AZ LDS Temple.

7. How did the reception go?
We had two receptions. The big fat greek wedding reception in Coolidge with so many people, I didn't know half of them. The second one was a week later in Holbrook. Our reception was competing with a High School wrestling tournament so not many people showed up.

8. How was the honeymoon? Wedding night was in a hotel in Mesa. After the reception we got to go to Sedona for a few days. We walked around and did all the free stuff since we were broke college students. Very windy, "sadly" we were "forced" to stay in the hotel room the first day because of the weather ;)

Mamasaysom: quest

I set out on a quest almost 5 years ago (can you believe it has been almost 5 years?) I feel marriage a neverending quest with so many things that you can accomplish and achieve. And like any real quest it is quite difficult at times but when you hit another stepping stone, it is all worth it.



Quest part 2.
Link's quest.

Poor Kitty

Abenanna has been nagging at me to write something so here's what has been going on.

My poor Conner has been very sick. Two weeks ago he was puking and straining. His fur is all matted because he doesn't feel good enough to clean himself. He even started to get that smell where an animal is about to give up. He lost so much weight (mind you he is down to 17 pounds but his frame is so huge that isn't very much weight for him)

I took him to the vet and they gave the poor boy an enema and drew some blood. The enema did nothing and we all assumed that since he wasn't eating, how could there be anything for the poor guy to poop. I took Conner home and the next day the vet asks me to bring him back in to go over blood test results and look for anything that is wrong with him. Blood tests came out fine, which can be great or a huge red flag of "your cat has cancer". Before we decided to see if Conner has cancer we did an x-ray of his mid section and his large intestine is jam packed (the thickness of my fist) with poo all through the large intestine.

Poor kitty, the vet took him for the night and did some more seriously agressive enemas with no result. The only choice now was to do surgery or to put him down. The fear of the surgery (besides it costs both arms and a leg) was that even though his intestines would be emptied, they may have serious damage and not work at after being put under so much stress. Conner isn't that old yet, he is about 8, so we opted for the surgery and hopefully things will start getting better.

He lived at the vet's office for about 4 days and became the new favorite resident. They don't keep in the kennels and let him roam the entire vet hospital. Spoiled rotten! Anyways, he finally pooped on his own today. I retook him to the vet to get his stitches out. While they were doing that the techs did a quick x-ray. His colon is starting to fill up with poop again but no where near the extreme where it was before. They decided to give him ANOTHER enema (poor kitty!) this afternoon in hopes that his intestines will have more time to heal and work on their own.

I miss having my normal fat boy at home. Maybe the vet is making most of this up so that they can keep Conner in their office. Anyway hopefully he will start feeling better and gains the weight back.

Mamasaysom: sticky

Collin's first birthday was very sticky!!


http://www.mamasaysom.com/weekly-theme/

People will sell anything!!!!

For a small side job, I have been working for a small ebay store for the last year. I get to find some interesting ....well it's junk. Anyway, today I found an auction that tops them all....Read the following auction. This sucker has no bids so if anyone wants it, it is still up for grabs. Auction number: 230159225632

PRESENTING

A HOMER SIMPSON SHAPED POTATO CHIP !!!

HERE IS THE STORY:

In January of 2007 my grandson was munching away on potato chips while I was busy at the computer.

Next thing I know he is yelling look, look , look, it's HOMER SIMPSON. To my surprise he was holding up a potato chip that did look just like Homer Simpson. Of course my Ebay brain kicked in and I said, Sell it on Ebay.

Instead he wanted to keep what he said was his lucky potato chip. Long story short, he has had a very GOOD year and now with the coming release of the The Simpsons movie, he has decided to offer his LUCKY SIMPSON POTATO CHIP to you.

This cool chip measures 2 inches by 1 1/2 inches. My grandson has kept it safely tucked away in a zip lock bag.

Broken Boys

My kids are all "broken". My 2 year old is driving me crazy with his screaming and yelling and tantrums. He deliberately disobeys ( I sound like Mufasa) He knows he is disobeying and yet he still does whatever he is not supposed to be doing with a smile on his face.
Quintin has suddenly turned clingy and will not let you put him down or be out of his site. I am getting nothing done!! Notice his thumb sucking.
My fat kitty is not so fat any more. He won't eat, he throws up anything he does eat, or has ugly bowel movements. I love him but I am tired of cleaning up these messes. I took him to the vet today. Poor guy had a kitty enema to see if something was blocking anything. He also had blood work done so we will see if he is truly sick or just stressed out from all of the "change".

I NEED a break from these boys and their brokenness. I haven't introduced Quintin to a bottle yet but I need to try soon so I can get some me time. Community band starts soon and I really want to start playing music again. Hopefully everything will start smoothing and out and go back to normal (fingers crossed.)

Family Portraits

Yeah we finally did family portraits. Unfortunately Collin was a little sick that day so he looks a little icky. But at least he was (mostly) calm to do a pic.

Camping

My little man is 3 months old! This month he learned to laugh. He thinks everything is funny. He loves it when you change his clothes, I guess it tickles him in the right way. If he sprays you while changing his diaper he has a huge grin and squeals with delight. He is such a sweet little thing. Gross but sweet. Quintin also wants to be a thumb sucker. He gets his thumb in his mouth but usually gags himself because he ends up sticking his whole fist in his mouth.

We went camping for 5 days. Collin did pretty good. He was very determined to get into everyone's cars, so we had to make sure everything was locked up all of the time. He loved fishing. He didn't understand the purpose of it but he loved to turn the reel and play with worms. My mom told him to kiss a trout and just as his lips touched she screamed. She thought he would think it was gross but he went right for it. Collin also went on his first boat ride. Unfortunately boats do not have wheels so he didn't think that it was very exciting until my dad let him drive. He loved that throttle and wanted to push the shiny red button (kill switch to the engine). And of course like every kid in the Taylor family he fell into the lake (several times) On Friday I bought him new shoes so it wouldn't matter if he got all wet again and of course he didn't.

It rained every night for at least 4 hours. Collin had to sleep with Grandma and Grandpa in the trailer, while poor little Quintin had to sleep in the tent with me. He is such a snuggly baby. Well, unless he is awake then he wants to squirm and wiggle. It was a good trip, it was good to get a different environment for a while.

YAY! We get to go. We will talk to yall soon!

Camping to be or not to be?

I want to make a lame attempt to go camping with my two little ones. Joe won't be able to go but the rest of my family will be there. I don't know if this going to work due to some issues that won't go away. Joe's car makes a thunk noise whenever you make a hard left or right. It is not a bearing, it is not the CV joint, Universal joint or the brakes. The shop has had it for a week now and we NEED the car back. The Durango "eats" way too much gas for Joe's commute (did I mention he can work one day a week at home now!) Collin is at the end of being sick but last night Quintin decided to get some boogers himself. I don't want to camp with a little one just starting to be sick. His nose isn't running profusely so maybe we will get lucky and it will be a quick little nothing. Camping isn't looking too hopeful yet but like I said, maybe we will get lucky.

Even more pics

Here are some more pics I found in my camera. Carter has Max and Collin on the 4 wheeler. The bottom one is from the 4th of July if you couldn't tell. The one of Quintin smiling without the towel is his 2 month old pic. Previous blog has even more pictures.

Hooray for PIcs

Hooray, I finally was able to download some pics. And here is Quintin's progress as well as other silly photos. The one with my Mom in it has Baby Max, Collin and Quintin. It was the first time that all of the grandsons were together.