My Hoi Polloi

lyla says to me (yells to me is more accurate): "i won tanny mom. peez. PEEZ. PEEZ!"

can i just say, even though she is yelling at me to get her candy, it is really hard to say no to her when she says please like that. so i give in and give her candy. her response:

" oh danks, mom."

followed by this smile. no wonder i never win.

my sister and i braved the crowds at the mall the other day to do a little shopping and to let the kids ride the train and sit on santa's lap. it turned out to be a pretty bearable outing though so we were happy.

when we first got off the escalator to see santa, lyla saw him, ran over to this fence, climbed on and yelled, "hiiiieeee, satta. hiiiiiieeeee." she was pretty excited!

for only getting one chance to take a picture of all 3 kids, i think it turned out pretty good.

kaleb's preschool teacher does a christmas program every year at a retirement home near the preschool. it was so fun to watch all these little kids sing the songs that they have been learning for the past couple months.

they each got to choose a santa hat or reindeer ears to wear for the program.

we love watching kaleb do all these new fun things. he is getting way too old.

grant's latest trick is sitting up. finally he can do it by himself and stay there for a few minutes...and then of course he falls over and yells at me until i sit him back up again or hold him. i love watching babies sit up: i sit and stare at grant just wondering where he got his perfect posture. i like to this he got it from me (***as i sit here typing with a slouched, aching back***)!

i got my hair colored. it turned out much darker than we (my stylist and i) expected it to but i think i might love it. this is close to my real hair color (which gets darker each time i have a baby) so hopefully it will be less maintenance on the color. what do you think?

i also learned that my hair is finally long enough that i can do it curly without looking like shirley temple. yay!

p.s. i hate taking pictures of myself. ughh!

today we woke up to snow...do you think someone is a little excited about it?? (i know i am!!)

they just stood there and watched for a good 15 minutes.

kaleb and corey were putting up lights on the house this last week. i peeked my head out the front door to see how it was going. i couldn't see kaleb so i asked corey where he was...corey just gave me a funny look....

i said, "if my son is on the roof you are dead!"

again, the same funny look from corey.

i go out and see this:

he was just sitting up there handing light bulbs and connectors to his dad. even though it was not so safe, it was the most fun kaleb had all week. too funny!

this little dude is already six months old. he is at such a fun stage. so happy (when he is being held) and so much fun and he is starting to be so mobile...it makes me a little nervous. he had his 6 months check up this week and, just like kaleb, he is getting taller and skinnier. he is up to 17.5 pounds and that seems so heavy to me! we all love having him around!!

notice the drool and the red face. it is almost like he has wind burn from all the drool that comes out of this kid. but he is so cute!

can't wait to see how much he changes in another 6 months!!

we just finished fall swimming lessons. it has been really fun and kaleb and lyla loved it. today i kept looking over to see how kaleb was doing in his little class and it took me forever to find him every time i looked. i can always identify him by his curly hair but it was all wet and it kept throwing me off. after i looked and found him the first time i realized just how long his hair really is. when we got home i just couldn't resist taking a picture:

kaleb's mullet.

i swear it doesn't look like a mullet when it is all dry and curly.

i always try and make sure that i put my nice camera away (or somewhere high enough that grubby hands can't reach) so that it doesn't get broken. yesterday i forgot to put it away and lyla picked it up, smashed it up against her face, and said "sheesh!" i thought about grabbing it away from her...but decided that i might as well teach her how to be careful with it and snap a picture.

here is the picture lyla took...i only had to help her find the right button to push.

and now i have to hide my camera again. after giving in and letting them each have a go at it, that is all they want to do.

it's crazy hat day at school. stick a block of cheese on kaleb's head and send him on his way.

(bytheway: this is kaleb's i-can-still-see-you-even-tho-my-eyes-are-super-closed face)

i head upstairs for some reason (probably to change yet another diaper or to wipe baby spit up off my shirt) and after about two minutes i hear someone yelling, "hep! hep! i stock mommy. i stock." i head back down to find this little one with both legs stuck in one leg hole of grant's toy thingy. you think she'd learn...nope. she does this at least 3 times. every day.

and this, friends, is why my blog is no neglected lately. my hands are quite full. and i am tired from holding babies all day. when i get a free minute, my blog is not as near the top of my to do list as it used to be. hopefully, from this point on, i will do better. hopefully.

i remember a few years back when college game day showed up for the utah vs. byu game up in salt lake. the espn guys were there to see utah (this was during their urban meyer days) and byu didn't stand a chance. corey was a little devastated that year. i remember him saying something like this to me: "it's not fair. the u of u is getting everything that i wanted byu to have."

so this year when he found out game day was coming he was like a kid at christmas. he woke up early that morning so he could head down to the stadium where they were filming and snapped a few pictures.

the setup.

but the best part. the best part is when he called me and said, "baby, you'll never guess who i just met!" i replied by excitedly asking who it could be. he goes on to say, "kirk herbstreit!!!" i racked my brain for a second until corey jumped in and said, "you don't even know who he is do you?" silence on my end of the phone.

well i know who he is now. corey brought home the evidence:

now the sad part to this story is that byu got spanked this game. but at least corey got to experience a little bit of the excitement.

this little dude is already 5 months old. he is rolling over, eating gross baby food, sleeping all night long, growing lots of teeth and smiling at mom all day long (...as long as he is being held that is.). we love him!

here he is with his sweetie cousin jade. and don't you love their matching jig onesies? we didn't even plan it!

i stayed home from church today with my two sick babies. lyla fell asleep watching lilo & stitch (of course) so little grant and i decided that there is no better way to pass a little time than to snap a few pictures of ourselves!!

we had a good halloween...but i am glad that it is done and gone and i am glad that i get to eat my kid's candy with them!! we did the usual halloween stuff: dinner at the in-laws and trick-or-treating. it will be so much fun next year when all these kids can walk on their own feet to trick-or-treat!!

here we are:

captain america, barack obama, hot wheels race car driver, the monk, and a cutie little cheerleader.

but she finally found her second wind, ate some candy, and did some good cheerleading for everyone!

with halloween in the bag i am about ready to bust out the christmas decor and start playing the christmas tunes for the kiddos. bring on winter, and christmas, and snow!!

this last wednesday corey came home and said, "we get to go to the governor's gala. it's a work thing. but it's super dressy. i have to rent a tux so you'll need to go get something nice to wear."

.....mmmmmkay!!! so he basically told me to a) go shopping and b) to buy something to dress up in. those happen to be two of my favorite things! i was so excited to have a night out with no kiddos (thanks ma and pa shelley and all you kids that were hanging out in their basement that put my g.rant to sleep!) and to get to dress up and be all fancy-like!!

of course we rarely get to dress up and go out so when we do we can't resist taking pictures of ourselves like it's prom night!! so here we are:

hey, remember how corey's bluetooth ear piece is practically glued to his ear. that's one way to ruin a perfectly lovely picture.

we didn't get any pictures of us at the dinner but it was a good time! we had a blast with good food and friends. thanks for letting me come with you corey!!

i love this funny picture of grant. this is his "i didn't do it" face. notice all the drool running down his face and onto his already soaked shirt. we wondered if he was just going to be a drooler but alas, we were wrong and his two bottom teeth poked through his gums today.

i am having a bit of deja vu about this whole scenario. lyla was an early teether as well and it sort of feels like i am just repeating my life over again. so, i am doing the same thing i did then, but in order to avoid being redundant and rewriting what was already written and is still true i will just refer you to this post from not so long ago.

i love fall. this year more than ever i have loved seeing all the fall colors. and the best part...i don't have to go far to see all the colors. i could see these little lovelies every time i looked out my front window. i told corey that we needed to plant some of those trees at our house so we could have our own orange trees.

sadly, with the storm we had the past couple of days, most of these leaves are gone now. but that's okay, bring on the winter!

really, all these pictures are exactly the same. but i couldn't choose my favorite. this cute boy is 4 months old today and he is so much fun. it seems like he has been here much longer than 4 months but at the same time the months have just flown by.

this little man is definitely a finger sucker...and don't you just love his shirt? i do.

happy 4 months g.rant - we love having you around.

well if you are lyla, you go straight for the part that is the most colorful and sugary looking.

she took one more bite after this picture and then she was done with it. i tried to tell her that the whole thing is glazed. she didn't care.