Funny Seth!

I have a friend whose 3 year old is sick and in the hospital so I got to watch her 2 month old baby today. Have I mentioned how much I absolutely love love love that age (and younger) where they just sleep cuddled up on your chest. AAHHH it is heaven to me. So I spent the whole time just snuggling w/ her. And it was just as good as I remembered. And of course all of my kids LOVED her. They all took turns holding her and holding the bottle while I fed her. It was all very very sweet. So after Eliott came home from church, he and I were talking and I said something to the effect of "we like babies in this house" and Seth busts in w/ "LITTLE babies" so we had a good laugh about that. and then when a friend came to pick her up from our house she brought over some goodies. After she left and tears were shed by Lexi (because the baby left) I told her, "but look she came and took the baby but she brought us some cookies!!!" and Seth says "wow, we made a good trade mom!!"

Dad is out of town

I have a friend that has a husband that goes hunting, so while he is gone they have a good ol' time and go shopping and watch movies and such. Well I am not that cool. Eliott went out of town early Monday morning. This is how my day went. I had to call the insurance to make sure Seth's insurance really became active today because they put him on a different plan than the rest of the family and by the time I called them they couldn't fix it till December 1st. So after that I called the dr. because he has major goopage draining out of his ear. So I can't get in until 1:30 so I decide to take the kids to the library and then to get a burger so that we didn't have to sit at home and wait for nap time to come and go w/out taking naps. So I did kinda score the good mom points w/ the library trip and the mcdonald's run. So after they play for a little bit, we go to the dr. And some how my kids manage to be the best behaved kids EVER!! We get in there and there is a massive line so I have them all sit on a bench in the sign in area and wait for me to get through the line. They all sat there for about 15 minutes w/ out fighting or complaining. They simply put on the best little faces and had conversations w/ the other people in the room. So once we get into the waiting room they wait patiently and watch the movie. Then we get called back to the area were they check your measurements and what not and this is how they sit. I tell you perfect!! Then we go to the exam room (I know seriously a ton of rooms) and we wait mostly nicely for the dr. to come by playing "I spy" and "rock, paper, scissors" (which is always funny to play w/ lex cuz she says "I spy something... your shirt" or some other object. and w/ rock paper scissors, she is always scissors and scissors always wins)
Then we go to leave and Riley loses it. She had been so great, they all had and she just melts down. It was fabulous!! Oh well, it was great while it lasted and I have pictures to prove the perfectness!!
So the deal w/ poor pathetic seth is: he started this yucky drainage thing later in the day on friday. But it wasn't too bad and knowing he changed insurance on monday I just didn't want to deal w/ it. Well the goop got thicker and greener. Serious nasty stuff here. So he had a bad infection that caused so much pressure it caused his ear drum to rupture. Poor kid!! And to top it off, he has a cough that won't quit and a fever tonight. So I had to call our home teachers to come over and give him a blessing since Eliott is still out of town. But thankfullly he gets home tomorrow!! Wahooo!!! So much for trying to be a fun mom when dad leaves town!! At least I hit the library!

Thankful and stuff

Then:
Now:
We had our 9 year anniversary on Wednesday! I can't believe it has been that long! I love looking back at our wedding pictures and seeing how excited we were! I love even more looking at pictures from now and still seeing how excited we are. I am so in love w/ this guy! I love that we have this wonderful family and that we get to spend forever together. So this Thanksgiving I am grateful for my fabulous hubby!
Also just so you know how wonderful he is let me share our turkey day w/ you!
Eliott always makes the turkey for me and then we kinda just help each other w/ the rest of the stuff. Well this year he made every last thing! It was great! the only thing I did was put the frozen rolls in the pan to rise. He even made the cinnamon rolls for breakfast, they were pillsbury, but still!!
Anyway he is great and I am so thankful that he is mine!! Love you Eliott!

Pictures!

So we went out to some pecan groves to take our pictures this year. We decided to take them ourselves, meaning we got situated and Eliott or I would push the timer button and then run! It was kinda funny but definitely fun. I think they turned out great and I love them. Lyddie was sure hard to capture though. She was not thinking pictures were fun! Anyway enjoy!






Not that I am claiming to be a pro or anything, but I think I would like to try my hand at this whole picture taking thing, soooo if you want to get your pictures taken and you don't expect perfection and you are willing to be a guinea pig for me, I would love to take pictures for you!

Christmas cards!

I am making Christmas cards to sell this year. So if anyone is interested you can check out my other blog for other pictures and pricing. There are horizontal and vertical options for each of these. (you can see them at the other blog)
Pass this along if you think anybody will be interested!

Girls, girls, girls, hair, hair, hair!!

Okay so while blog hopping the other day, I came across THIS site. It has tons of cute hair do's for little girls. So I decided that I would try some out on my girls. So I wanted to do Riley's hair like this. And I gotta say it turned out pretty cute, especially for a first try! I usually don't have the patience to do all of their hair, but they have such pretty hair that I think I might put more of an effort into their cuteness.




And then we had Lexi, her hair is about shoulder length so not as much to play w/ but I think it turned out super cute too.

Lexi on the other hand was horribly sad about her hair. She wanted "barbie hair" (braids) I even did hers first so it wasn't like she had seen Riley's, but she was so sad. And when she doesn't get what she wants out of her hair she gets frustrated and just starts rubbing her hands all over it and trying to pull out rubberbands. So before she could manage to destroy her cute hair, the awesome mom that I am, I bribed her w/ candy to leave it alone. Luckily it worked, but it also brought candy to the front of her little Lexi brain, so while I did Riley's hair she grabbed the candy bucket and helped herself. Oh well it stayed cute!! It was super cute on the way to church (I was only late by like 2 or 3 minutes too!!) Lexi and Riley both sat in their seats w/out putting their head on the back rest so that their hair would stay cute. And it is a 20 minute drive to church too! Girls are so fun!!



Lyddie doesn't have much to work w/ but she has some curls in the back that my other girls never had, so she just got her hair scrunched. But I did put it in a cute little half ponytail. She looked so big!!


So part of the bribe was that I would do braids another day, so why not today huh? So this is what I came up w/ for today. I am new to parting, it is kinda hard for me but I didn't do to bad eh?!
and now she is a happy little lex w/ her barbie hair!

3 pretties and a scary!

So a little recap of our night. Lyddie = snow white, Lexi = fairy, Riley = barbie ballerina (you had to make sure to say barbie though!!) Seth = scary ghost

We had tons of fun trunk or treating. Our ward always does a pot luck chili right before we fill up on candy. Lyddie was too funny, she didn't quite get the concept of the trick or treating thing. Everytime she would get a piece of candy in her bucket she would take it out and hand it to me to open. So by the next car she was hurrying to finish the piece in her mouth so she could get another one. She only lasted about 5 cars before I took her back to Eliott to help pass out candy. We had a great time and that pretty much wraps it up!

By popular demand...

Okay so I have had quite a few people that wanted me to order more letters like this

If anybody would like me to order them let me know. The company I ordered these exact ones from has no more "A"'s so I had to order from somewhere else, so the font is slightly different and they come in the cardboard color. So let me know if you want to order. They are $2 a letter and you can get whatever letters you want. (last name, holiday ones and whatnot)
Plus at super saturday a couple people told me they wanted them, and my brain was fried that day so I don't remember who everyone was that wanted them. So if you told me saturday, then tell me again! I will most likely order them in about 2 weeks and I will need the money first please!! Okay that is all!

So sweet

This picture doesn't really have anything to do w/ my story other than the fact the story is about Riley. I just had to put a cute picture up so you could picture her face!
So we have a Primary Activity Day coming up where the kids are going to be putting together Hygiene kits for the Humanitarian stuff. So the kids are supposed to bring something to put in the kits (there is a list of things needed) and they are encouraged to work to earn the money for the item they bring. So today I tell Seth and Riley about it and tell them they need to help clean the house so they can earn money for soap. So of course they have tons of questions so I am describing cases where the hygiene kits would be used. So I tell them that if there was a hurricane or a tornado and people lost their houses they... then I hear Riley sitting on the floor and w/ this cute go-getter type attitude she finishes my sentence w/ "then here come the Reynolds kids"
She thought they were going to go in there and give the people the kits. It was too funny!!

Mission accomplished...

So a few years ago I decided it would be fun to run a marathon. I talked about it off and on for those years and finally this year I decided to do it!! I found a half marathon (13 miles) in Payson. It is called the Rim Country Challenge. So I found a training guide and set out. I ran 5 days a week for 12 weeks (minus the last couple weeks, I wasn't very consistent!!) and I worked hard. So the day was finally here. We dropped the kids off at 2 different friends houses (thank you thank you!!) and set out for Payson. We left the seats to the van in Casa Grande and blew up our air mattress. It was such a gorgeous night! We opened the back windows and crashed in the van! It was so fun!! In the morning we headed over to the registration area. I thought there would have been more people but there were only 87 registered to do the half marathon! Which made me nervous since one of my main goals was to NOT BE LAST. Now you might laugh at that, but I ran cross country in high school, and it was not uncommon for me to be the last runner during the meets. I can go and go and go but I go slow!!! So seeing that there weren't many people I was a little worried about that, so I decided to focus on my next goal: TO FINISH. Now I didn't really doubt that I wouldn't finish, I had done my running, but still that was a main goal! My only other goal was to do it in under 3 hours. I really wanted to do it in 2:30ISH but I didn't know how well I would do on the hills and in the altitude since I trained in Casa Grande area and it is completely flat. So anyway we got to the start and off we went.


My dad came up there to watch me run so he and Eliott went down the course a ways to wait for me and yell and take a picture and what not. So after my awesome picture they headed off to Denny's for breakfast!!
Then after breakfast they came and tracked me down again, at this point I was pretty much by myself w/ just a few runners that I could see and some more behind that I couldn't see. They drove by me for a minute or so until I told them to leave, it was too hard to run like that. But on the upside, I need something in my stomach, so I got to have a few bites left over from my bar from breakfast and a much needed drink of water!!

The weather was gorgeous!! It could not have been better! It was overcast the entire time and had a slight breeze. It felt great. And the scenery was so pretty. We ran through neighborhoods and it was fun to see some of the different houses.

They met up w/ me once more but didn't snap any pictures, instead they got out of the car and cheered for me like goobers!! My best friend from growing up, April, came to cheer for me too!

I felt pretty good considering the difference in where I trained to where we ran. I do have hip problems and the hills were killing my hips. But I moved along and I finished!! I actually met all 3 of my goals. There was one girl that I knew was behind me but I didn't think anybody else was and I couldn't see her anymore so I didn't know if she dropped out. So when I finished I thought that there was a good chance I was last, but Dad and Eliott told me there were quite a few people behind me. And when all was said and done I think some of them dropped out!! So, not last, finished, and I did it in 2:30ish. 2:39 something, to be more exact!!

It was such a good feeling to accomplish something that I have worked so hard to do!! Eliott has been a great support too, during all my running. I tried doing it before he left for work but sometimes that didn't happen. And on Saturday mornings when I would do my long run, he never complained about the time I was gone! He is fabulous!! Thanks Babe!!! I love you!!

Girls night out!

Lately Eliott has been taking Seth out on Saturdays, just the boys, to run errands or do something fun. So I decided it was Riley's turn. So we got all dressed up "like big girls" and went out.

She was so excited!

So first we went to Olive Garden. We love having a new Olive Garden and Riley loves the breadsticks. But I can't lie, I love Olive Garden and it was a good excuse to go.

And then we went to Claire's so she could get some new earrings. She hadn't ever been before so I was hoping she would LOVE it. Well, LOVE it she did! she walked in and was oohing and ahhing over everything. She couldn't decided what to look at or touch first. It was hilarious, I really wish I would have thought to video it. She was in little Riley heaven!!

She picked out earrings that were little flipflops in different colors and patterns. She even passed up flowers and hearts for these flipflops!!


After Claires we went to Walmart to find a pair of black shoes for Carly's wedding. We found a super cute pair, but I didn't take pictures.
We had a blast and I can't wait to take her out again. Although the next one on one is Lexi and she picked to have Daddy take her on a date!