snow Snow SNOW! (a little bit)

Since it finally decided to snow last week I thought we should go and play in it fast, because let's face it, I'm pretty sure it's not going to snow anymore this year if it keeps on keeping on. So here is documentation of Conner's first (last year didn't really count. do you think he even remembers? no!) outing in the snow!:)

Getting ready to go out. (please pardon the mess. I have a 1 year old)

Unfortunately it was almost gone when we got there...

While we're on the topic of christmasy stuff, here is my wreath I made a few weeks ago.  cute huh?

Thanks for stopping by! See ya later!

The Infernal Devices

First off I just have to say this book series is my new favorite guilty pleasure. It is basically the awesome, exciting storytelling of Harry Potter with the romance of Twilight, and every other book I love all slammed into one. I love it. That being said...the second book comes out TODAY!!! and I'm so excited. Here's my review of the first book so you can see if you want to jump on the excitement wagon with me!
(Here are some other books I've reviewed in case your interested:))


Clockwork Angel
476 pages


Summary
16 year old orphan Tessa Gray is from 1878 New York City. Her brother Nate has been working in London, England for the past little while when their Aunt Harriet, the care giver to these two, passes away leaving Tessa alone. Nate sends for her to come to live with him in London so she does. She is intercepted upon docking in England by two old, ugly ladies claiming to be friends of her brother. Well they are anything but friends and trap Tessa in their house where she learns of her mysterious gift: she can transform, at will, into another person. The sisters train Tessa to use her gift in preparation for the mysterious Magister.
Just when Tessa feels that all is lost she is rescued by Will, a shadowhunter. (basically the police of all bad things that shouldn't exist outside of books but do) She takes refuge in the institute where the other shadowhunters live and uses her new found ability to help them uncover who the Magister is in promise that they will help her find her brother.

My review
Ok, so we all know that I loved this book. Here's why:
Writing
The writing was amazing! Probably one of the most well written books I have read in...a long time. I never once doubted the world that Cassandra Clare created or anything in it. It flowed nicely and I saw the whole thing unfold before my mind like a movie. The plot was, to me, original and so interesting. There was a definite plot to this book while leaving little strings for the next books. It seems like lately a lot book series are just a reeeeally long book where each book leads to the next in an overall story, which makes for not so interesting books until the last one. (does that makes sense? hum,) Well this is not the case for this book! There were twists and turns and what I thought for sure was going to happen sure didn't. It is darker (think the last half of the Harry Potter series) with an obvious Good vs Evil premise.
Characterization 
This is the first book I have read by Cassandra Clare, and from what I can tell of her writing is that she is amazing at writing wonderful believable characters. There was not one pancake in this book, that including characters who were introduced and talked about for five seconds.  Everyone was a living, breathing person (so to speak) and I fell in love with every single character in this book. I loved seeing how the proper Tessa dealt with the informal and sometimes crazy shadowhunters. I think Will was my favorite character. He is such a punk but so funny! Definately the comic relief. But underneith all that sarcasm and wit I got glimpses of who he really is which will be interesting to find out in the coming books.
Romance
What would one of my reviews be without talking about the love story? I think because the characters were so real made the romance that much better. I was just rooting for them to be together! Ok, so the main love interests are Will and Tessa. I love it because they both don't want to like each other, but over time they just...do. If you like the push and pull of a Pride and Prejudicesque  love story then you'll for sure like this. It is set up to have a love triangle with another shadowhunter, Jem, that I'm sure will come about later. (which, remember I'm a weirdie and like my triangles so I'm kinda excited for that)
Overall
This book was fantastic. I have actually read it twice, once a few months ago, and just last week in preparation for the second book Clockwork Prince coming out TODAY! (come on UPS guy, bring it to me soon!) and found it wonderful each time. (it's rare for me to find a book that I enjoy the second time around as much as the first) It is a prequel to Cassandra's other series "The Mortal Instruments" (from what I can tell a modern day version of the same type of thing) which I havnen't read, but I understood everything just fine without reading it first. If you love fantasy and romance and just a plain good story this is a must for you to read. My only complaint is that it makes Conner's nap time a little less productive as far as house work is concerned :)


Clockwork Prince

(im)patiently waiting for the UPS guy to deliver!
UPDATE: 12/9/2011. I have read and it was SO good! here is what I thought!
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The Joys of Parenthood

Rusty's grandma passed away last week and her funeral was on Monday. We have 9:00 church and on Sunday I went in to wake Conner up and he seemed so tired. Usually when I get him dressed it's like trying to catch a chicken running around (not that I've ever done that, but I can imagine it would be pretty hard) but that morning he just laid on my bed and let me dress him like when he was a little baby, which I'll admit, was kind of nice. I just figured he was tired and needed to wake up. We were all ready to go and I was standing with Conner in my bathroom giving myself a once over in the mirror before leaving when what happens? Conner threw up everything in his stomach. Luckily we were standing by the sink and I just aimed him in the right direction so nothing was too messy. Well needles so say we didn't go to church that day. He was sick off and on all day and mostly just wanted to cuddle with his daddy. (What a daddy's boy. Doesn't he understand that I'M the one who likes to cuddle?) And Conner is so not a cuddlier so he must have been really sick. I stayed home with him while Rusty went to the viewing that night, not sure if we would make it to the funeral the next day.

Well, when he woke up on Monday he was running around and I had to chase him like a chicken to get him dressed and everything seemed to be normal. So we figured it was a 24 hour thing and he was good now. And he was for the most part. He was great for the viewing before hand and even did really well for most of the talks at the funeral. (well, as good as any 1 1/2 year old can be sitting for over an hour) The funeral was good, but reeeeeally long. It was getting really hot in the chapel and all of the sudden Conner started whining and got cuddly with Rusty. Rusty held him on his lap for a few minutes and then, all of the sudden, he threw up all over the pew. There was that instantaneous moment of "uh, what do we do?" where we just froze trying to take in the situation. Then tissues and hankies were thrown to us from all directions and we started cleaning up as best we could with tissues. Rusty had gotten the brunt of it on his pants since he was holding Conner. As we were cleaning, he threw up again! I dropped all of my sick tissues, picked him up and made my way down the row (of course we were sitting smack dab in the middle) as everyone moved their legs out of the way. When we got to the isle he started throwing up again and we left a lovely trail all the way to the doors. Nice.

But apparently he felt much better afterward. In the bathroom I set him on the counter and as I wiped off his pants and shirt (the one day I forget to have extra clothes in my bag) and then cleaning myself off, he was just jibber jabbering and laughing like he was having the time of his life. Good thing he's so cute.

Rusty was a pal bearer and supposed to dedicate the grave site so we couldn't just leave and I didn't want to go by myself in case he threw up again while I was driving and couldn't do anything about it (not that he really had anything else in his stomach I'm sure) The nice RS ladies told me to go and they would clean up the chapel (so nice) and we went to the grave site and he was just fine.

LUCKily Rusty's grandpa was oblivious to the the whole thing. That was what I was worried most about, that we had totally ruined the funeral for him, but someone said to Rusty "looks like your pants got cleaned up" or something and his grandpa asked "What happened to your pants?"

Morals of the story?
1. If Conner wants to cuddle with you, BEWARE
2. Always ALWAYS have extra clean clothes. (I usually do, but I just forgot to check. dumb!)
3. No matter how bad of timing something is, it could have been worse. All of the grand kids got up and sang "I am a Child of God" and it could have been then. Or it could have been ON the people as were were walking to the isle. Instead he waited a few seconds. Thanks kid.
and 4. Being a parent is never boring.

Happy belated H-day

We had so much fun on Halloween this year. We ended up going to Orem where my parents succumbed to peer pressure from the neighbors and decorated. (last year they didn't do anything at all and boy did they hear about it) It was Conner's very first trick-or-treating experience and he had a blast! He did so good. We hit up probably 20 houses and he walked the entire time and only dropped his bucket once! not too shabby! But honestly, I think the I had just as much, if not MORE fun than he did. Whoever said that kid traditions become fun again when you have your own kids was totally right! Last year we didn't do much because if you remember, it rained like crazy and was about 3 degrees outside. So this year was much much better. (beware, tons of pictures to follow)

Ok, so let's first take a trip down memory lane and remember what he looked like last year for Halloween.  Crazy to think that he was just starting to think about crawling at that point...

Here he is taking in all of Grandma and Grandpa's craziness that is Halloween when we first got there.

Dancing to the music. He got pretty into it.

Observing his parent's grave sites.

Not quite sure what to think about Grandpa wolf-man.

Busy watching the witch flying.

I love his face in this one! haha

My parent's neighbors had this cool trick-or-treating mobile and since the universe revolves around Conner he just assumed that he could jump on and go with them...which he did.

Passing out candy with Grandma.

Trick-or-treading! Look at him so big!

By the end of the night he had T-O-T down to a science! He knew that you held your bucket out and people put stuff in it. And he also figured out by the end for the most part that you weren't supposed to go INSIDE the houses.

Well, we had so much fun with our second Halloween with Conner!

Book Reviews anyone?

Well I've been reading lots and lots of books lately. Rusty's been studying, working, going on business trips, and so I've read a lot in a little amount of time. I decided that since I love reading reviews by a few other friends who do this on their blog that I would jump on the band wagon and write some of my own. You can click here or the link "what I'm reading" at the top of the page.

nip/tuck: furniture edition

We bought this lovely tv stand when we got married and it has been with us for 5 wonderful years. Unfortunately during those 5 special years we have moved 4 times, one of those places not the most friendly moving access to the front door. Our sad little tv stand got bumped and bruised each time, the move from Logan almost killing it. (it was literally falling apart in places) So I decided since we can't quite afford to just go and buy a new one I would give it a MUCH needed face-lift.

Before

Ta-Da! After!

And then after adding all of Conner's toys. He's gonna get to the bottom shelf...might as well make it Conner friendly.

 So for $15 worth of paint and supplies, some heavy duty wood glue, and 3 days of painting during naps, (I had a feeling that Conner and wet paint wouldn't mix very well)  I was able to transform my co-ugly-ugh entertainment center into this cute one!  For the background I kept my eye out at stores for contact paper, or wall paper, or even wrapping paper that would work but could find nothing at all. so frustrating! But then my genius mind reminded me that I have a degree in graphic design (not that you need said degree to make gray stripes) and a giant printer with giant paper printing capabilities and that I could make my own background. Duh! so that's what I did.

And while we're on the topic of crafty me, here is a Halloween decoration I made a few weeks ago.

Pumpkin Patch

After General Conference on Saturday we drove down to Riverton and went to a pumpkin patch with Rusty's fam. Conner went through his very first not so spooky but very hard to walk through especially when you're 1 1/2 corn maze and saw lots and lots of pumpkins! It made it feel a little more like it was October despite the 83 degree weather. (not that I'm totally complaining, but I do like me some nice crisp fall weather. that's all I'm sayin)

Awe, our family in front of an old truck (that looks suspiciously like Bella's truck from twilight...hummm)

Cute cousins.

Conner doesnt' like to take pictures with mommy. ESPECIALLY when there are lots of pumpkins to explore

They had tons of old tractors and Conner had to try them all out.

Afterwards while the boys went to the priesthood session we Red boxed a movie for the kids to watch. Don't they look like they're having so much fun?  This serenity lasted about 5 minutes. (and I'm really surprised Conner lasted that long)

Operation: FATTY Update

Well little Conner is now 18 months! Can you believe it? I surely can't. But with that age comes a Dr visit and OFFICIAL weigh in. ready? Drum roll please (dadadadad)

20 lb 13oz 

(so close to 21! dang it!) that moves him from the 1% to the 3%. Hooray! Since for some REALLY weird reason the growth chart doesn't start until the 5% he's not technically on the chart still. hummm Anyway, so our dr says that if he keeps it up he might just be on the charts in 6 months for his 2 year check. So we'll continue feed him straight butter sticks and ice cream all the time (just kidding...maybe) and do our darnedest to get some weight on our little cutie. For other stats for grandparents who want to know, he is 31 inches tall (25%) and I can't remember his head but it was 25% too. He also got a shot at his check up but lucky for him he only got one, a booster for whatever one they gave him last time, since he couldn't get the flu shot due to his egg allergy. He lucked out there (other than the being allergic to eggs thing)

The Basket Test

About a week after Conner was born we took this cute little picture of him in a basket. awe, let's bask  in his littleness...(not to mention all that dark hair. What the heck happened to that?)

18 Months later here, he is with the EXACT same basket. (not an imposter)

Good thing we could perform this scientific basket test, otherwise we might not have known that he grew.

MaryAnne MaryAnne quite...contrarian?

How does my garden grow? All by it's self apparently.

Here is the sticker patch that we call my backyard. It looks like a normal pile of weeds at first glance right? but look closer my friends at the left hand side just before the fence ends...see anything?

It's SQUASH!  

I noticed its sudden appearance forever back and thought "awe it'll die soon" Especially after we sprayed the whole backyard with round-up. But has it? NO! I would like to not so subtly ask for an apology from all of the people, who shall remain nameless, who think I can't keep things alive. I have a crazy little boy and now squash that, despite not watering or weeding and spraying it with weed killer, has thrived. HA! Please note that it is only the squash that I spray with poison and don't feed.

If I can produce such awesomeness on accident just think of what I could do if I tried?! I'd never have to go grocery shopping again!

A lot of little thoughts

So remember how I made it a goal to post more than once a month? well according to my last post I have 2 days before it has been a month so I guess I'll post. I don't want to be breaking my goal already do I? nope I sure don't. Unfortunately...I have nothing really exciting to write about. At least nothing that could be it's own headlining post so here are a lot of little things that are almost exciting enough to write about.

Life has been settling into it's little grove and I've been just going day to day. Not that I'm complaining, that's just how it is. Sadly I think the unpacking drive has left and anything that wasn't unpacked within the first few weeks of living here has slowly been moved into "the room" you all know what I'm talking about, I'm sure you all have one, so I won't explain what it is.

One thing (one of the very FEW, in fact it might just the the ONLY) things I don't like about where we live is there are millions of mosquitoes here. On Sunday I was eaten by one, and where? you might ask, my finger! I have gotten many a mosquito bites in my life but as I can remember never on my finger. My finger became a sausage. Do you know the feeling when you are hiking or walking for a long time and your hands just hang there and all the blood rushes to your fingers and they swell up? well that was my one finger but itchy for the past 2 1/2 days. stupid mosquitoes.

hum...anything else...oh, so OPERATION: FATTY! we haven't had an update for a while. So Conner is unofficially 20 lbs now! hooray. I say unofficially because it wasn't at the Dr's or anything, just me weighing myself and then with him and doing math. So even though he has been in his forward facing car seat since he was 14 months (shhhhh don't tell) he now legally can be! Also since we found out that he was allergic to eggs as well as peanuts we have cut eggs out of his diet and he has given up his bulimic ways of throwing up after he eats, which I'm sure has helped his pudge.

We also were able to (finally) see Harry Potter 7 part 2 this last weekend. Yeah, yeah I know it's been out for forever blah blah. But really, when you have a 17 month old who can't sit still for literally 2 minutes, let alone a whole Harry Potter movie and you just moved where you don't know any little Beehives who can look after my little lad and you live over an hour away from any parents it makes it a little hard. So we shipped him off to his Aunt and Uncle's in Riverton and let him learn to play nice with his cousins while we went. But anyway that was super duper  fun. So sad that the movies are done though.
Oh and I'm sure that this is old news and I'm just not up with the times but I just found out that one of my fav books, The Hunger Games, is going to be a movie! yay! So that was pretty exciting for me to find out. Too bad it's not till march. Lame. But it's something to look forward to! I always like that!

Much Ado About Conner

Conner's been pretty funny lately and here are some moments where I happened to have my camera handy. hooray!

Lately Conner's been very into books and he likes to read them wherever he happens to find one.

I walked into the room and he had climbed into the back of his little dump truck with a book. so funny!

Here was last weekend at Lamb day during the parade. Apparently it wasn't very exciting.

This is not only a picture of how friendly and bread sharing Conner is, it is also showing how well his scar above his right eye is healing from his stitches.

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Let's remember what it looked like the day we got the stitches out. (which happens to be the same day he was really channeling Albert Einstein)

which he apparently didn't like