Blogged Down

Sorry for the blogging drought the last few weeks. It's been hectic around here and we got a little "blogged down." Fortunately times like this give us lots of material to blog about. Here's a taste of what's to come.

We had a little Play-Doh party for Lila's 3rd birthday.
These were the invitation that Johnny and I made.

(Click on the images to get a better view)

Even Abby got in on the preparations. Here she is helping to sand the "rolling pins"
(thanks to our friend Matt Romney for the carpentry work!!)

A Table For "Two"

Tonight we made an emergency diaper run to Target (what a great family night activity). On the way Lila requested that we get hot dogs in the Target "restaurant". Since there is a Friendly's in the parking lot of Target and I hate hot dogs, we opted to go there and have dinner and ice cream. Shortly after we sat down, this couple was seated next to us. They have 2 year old twins and a 6 month old baby. Sorry about the blurry cell phone shots, but I had to document this and it was all that I had available.


We smiled and chatted a little about how funny it was to run into another family with twins. Then a few minutes later this family with a toddler and twin babies was seated. While walking in they noticed the previously family with twins and started to talk to them, then they pointed over at us. We all laughed at the odd coincidence.


Then a little bit later this family walked in with another set of twins!

Four families with young twins and another child all seated together at the same time. What are the chances of that? After seeing the shocked look on peoples faces all the time when they find out we have 3 kids under 3, it is nice to know we aren't alone in our madness. Maybe our crazy life just isn't so crazy after all.

"Blood On Your Face"

Yep, they are both up and walking these days (for the last month or so). The taller they are and the faster they are moving the harder they fall. Zack drew first blood, I think. This picture is from a run in with one of his toys. He also bloodied his nose on the vacuum cleaner (we decided to give first aid that time rather than take pictures).


Here we caught Abby in free fall.

We figure we should show some evidence that they can actually walk without falling.


I pulled the title for the post from the second verse of "We Will Rock You". I thought it fit nicely. Emily recommended that I go with that "I get knocked down, but I get up again" song. I concede that it might fit a little better, but I find that song a little too annoying.

My Sweet Johnny

Johnny and I went on our first date 10 years ago today. We went to a BYU Preference (aka girl's choice) dance and the rest is... history.


He's still my best friend and asking him to that dance 10 years ago was one of the best things I've ever done. He even brought me a dozen red roses this morning! At the risk of being a little too gushy and in honor of our 10 years together, I thought I would post 10 of my favorite things about my sweet Johnny. (In no particular order...)

1. I love watching Johnny play with our kids. He's such a great dad and loves to wrestle and tickle and tease. They all love him (Zack even prefers Johnny consistently over me...). I wish every kid in the world was as lucky as my 3.


2. I love that Johnny is incredibly patient with my weaknesses (most of the time!) :) And my quirks (like putting at least one ! behind every sentence!!!) Sometimes my shortcomings are glaringly obvious, (like the permanent pile of clean laundry that's been on our couch so long that Lila has taken to calling it the "laundry mountain"!) Other times they are things that only he knows about... either way, he is often much sweeter to me than I deserve! (See, I told you I use exclamation points too much!!)

Johnny & Lila

3. I LOVE his laugh. It's more of a giggle really.


4. I love his family. I couldn't have asked to marry into a better bunch of nuts! They all have their moments and a few issues here and there, but their house is definitely "a place to be loved" and I sure do love them like they were my own!


5. I love talking and laughing with Johnny. Some of you wonder why I always go to bed at 3am. It's because I can't stop talking to him. Mostly we laugh about how hilarious Lila is, but even 10 years later, we still love to talk about our views of the world and random life.


6. I love the collective results of our creative vision. Most of the fun and cute things I do he has a hand in. Most guys don't care what their wives do, but my guy does. This blog is a great example. Most of my friends have blogs that they post on for their families. My blog is really a family blog. He posts as much (if not more) than me! All of the crafts and projects I do, he gives me help and great ideas on. (Just wait until you see what we've got cookin' for Lila's birthday party!!) Everything I do is better because he's a part of it!

7. I love being a parent with him. (I know, I already said I love watching him play with the kids, but this is different, I promise! Read on...) Johnny really is the best dad I know. Some (ok, maybe a lot) of his ideas are slightly strange or a little bit gross, but they always turn out to be great moments! He is calm and steady and helps me to be the same. His discipline methods are amazing and he really knows what's important in life. I am definitely a better mom because of him!


8. My Johnny is oh so very smart! I know I'm bragging, but here in the land of Harvard and MIT it's easy to forget that going to these great schools is a huge accomplishment (for the record, he only goes to MIT). He graduated from BYU with a 4.0 in arguably one of the very hardest majors they have and received 2 (yes, TWO) prestigious fellowships. The thing I love about his smartness though, is that you're often surprised by it if you don't know him well. He's easy to talk to and down to earth. Not to mention funny... but wait, I'm getting ahead of myself.

(it's a wig... a good wig!)

9. Johnny is funny. It was one of the first things I fell in love with about him. The night we met (thanks Rindi!) we stood on the porch outside of Wells Hall and talked and talked. He told the most amazing stories about wrestling alligators and hanging out with his brothers. I was smitten by his GIGANTIC (seriously... GIGANTIC! someday I'll post a picture) muscles and Florida lifeguard tan, but it was his personality that one my heart over. He often says these days that I don't think he's funny anymore because I don't laugh at his jokes like I used to. So this is to set the record straight Johnny Russ. I love it that you are funny!

10. I love how much he loves me. Sometimes I do stupid things (ok, a lot of times.) And especially these days with 3 little ones clambering for my attention all the time, I'm not the girl I used to be. But he still loves me, messy house, no make up, ponytail, and all.


I love you Johnny Russ! Thanks for a great 10 years!

Guzzle Down Sweets

Lila has been thoroughly enjoying her Halloween candy haul. The other day when she came to get me to open her 5th piece of candy in as many minutes, I thought maybe we should start weening her. Lila is usually pretty reasonable if you can explain things to her. So I told her that eating a little candy was OK but if you ate a lot of candy it was bad for you. Of course the immediately reply was the notorious, "Why?" I decided that this situation called for a little Google image search. You can imagine the awful images that came up when I searched for "tooth cavity". Then Lila asked, "What else will happen if you eat too much candy?" So I told her about type II diabetes and searched for images of "insulin shots". I thought that should settle it. But Lila kept asking and asking for "What else will happen, Daddy, what else?" That was when the inspiration came. After searching YouTube for a minute I found this video. I told Lila that this girl ate too much candy even though they told her not to.



After she was done watching it like 7 times, I asked, "Lila, do you want to eat a lot of candy or just a little candy?" She replied, "Only a little bit, I don't want get big and blue."

One of these things is not like the other...

Abby (11 months)

Lila (11 months)

If you ask me, the only thing similar is the outfit!!

(I have to confess that in real life there are a few similarities.
However, I do think that Lila and Zack look very similar.
I'll have to remember to dress them in the same outfit and take a picture!) ;)

Lila (almost 3 years and incredibly excited to get to stand on the table!!)

"Look, me and Abby match, match"

I Love to See the Temple

I took the kids out to take pictures in the leaves a few weeks ago. These are a few of the pictures I got of the Boston Temple near our house.

When we first moved to Boston, Johnny asked the members of our ward (strangers who were kindly moving our furniture and stuff into our house for us) where the temple was. Little did we know, it was just up the hill. I've really grown to love the Boston temple and it is my favorite part of the drive to church and the drive up Route 2 (a major freeway by our house.) The temple sits on the 2nd highest hill in Boston and the members of the church here have lots of miraculous stories about how it was finally built. It's become one of my very favorite temples. Beautiful, isn't it!!

Pumpkin Pride

It was my job to post the pumpkins and I didn't get around to it until now. Sorry it is late.

Emily's, Lila's, Johnny's

Lila actually got to help this year, and she didn't even try to eat the pumpkins as she has in the past.


If some are are wondering where I have taken my inspiration for my amazing jack-0-lantern, I typically use a pumpkin stencil from HomeStarRunner.com. This year I used the Strong Mad stencil. Previously I used the Trogdor stencil which turned out very nicely.

If you enjoyed the Trogdor cartoon you may enjoy some of their Halloween toons (Homestarlaween Party, A Pumpkin Carve-nival, A Boogidy Boogidy). You gotta love those costumes. If you didn't think Trogdor was funny (Emily sure doesn't) then I wouldn't bother watching these.

Lovin' the Leaves Again

I didn't give Lila a choice for this photo shoot (see this post if you don't have a clue what I'm talking about) so we headed over to the Gore Place to take some pictures in the leaves. I keep having these great ideas that I'm going to use my new camera and get some amazing pictures of all 3 of the kids smiling and looking so sweet... let's just say they don't have those same thoughts. I have been able to get a few pictures of them playing though. Lila did have fun with her "big sister pumpkin". I guess that these days that's all I can hope for! Anyway, here's the latest photo shoot. I just LOVE the fall in New England and can't resist taking pictures. There will probably be more so stay tuned...

My sweet Abby!

See a theme here? Zack likes to eat nasty stuff.

Aside from beautiful leaves, the Gore place has a little barnyard.
Lila's trying to look for the animals but the barns were all empty.
We did see some goats, a llama and the roosters.

Lila's playing "Peek-A-Boo" with this rooster!

Abby in my sweatshirt. For some reason I love this picture.
I think it captures her little personality well.

12 months pregnant

Seriously. That's how pregnant I was (at LEAST!) I was measuring full term at 5 months! At my biggest I was measuring 52 weeks (yep there are 52 weeks in a year). Anyway, by request and for those of you who were deceived by the smallness of my belly in last year's Halloween pictures, this one is to set the record straight (and you don't even get the full bigness in this picture.)

This is it. The morning before they FINALLY induced me with Abby & Zack. 39 weeks and 1 day!

Our Perfect Fairytale

I know what you're thinking (because I was thinking it all night long)... "That is one cute little witch." But you're wrong. She's a "scaaaarrry witch." She was hilarious trick-or-treating and I haven't had that much fun on a Halloween since I pretended to be a pregnant woman as a kid. Lila was so excited she would run up each sidewalk and ring the doorbells (at least the ones she could reach). Everyone talked about how cute she was and one woman from Norway even took a picture of her. I know I'm bragging but I can't help myself today. These kids were too darn cute!



I debated for a long time what I should make the twins for Halloween. We finally settled on the perfect little fairytale. Abby was a princess and Zack was a frog prince. (Lila was the witch that cast the spell.) Cute, I know! :)

Happy Halloween everyone!