It worked!

I have been blessed with very talented friends who know how to look at a picture and make a cake look just like the picture. This is not one of my talents. However, after seeing and tasting Hannah's Tinkerbell rice krispie cake at the beginning of the month, I came up with what I thought was a great idea. See, I signed up to take a treat for Zane's Halloween party. I figured with the baby on the way and such it would probably be the easiest party for me to help out with. At the beginning of the year Mrs. Cocks told us rice krispie squares and puff wheat squared are always good snacks because they eat in their classroom and aren't as messy as cupcakes. With this in mind, and having seen Tinkerbell I decided to make pumpkins! I mentioned it to Mrs. Cocks when we had our parent/teacher interview and she immediately thought I was going to decorate 25 individual pumpkins...ha ha ha. She's a funny woman. Actually, she was quite overwhelmed with the idea for me. No, I came up with something better:

I made a double batch of rice krispie squares and put them in pie plates - the disposable ones are going to school and the metal one is ours. Then I took icing that I had leftover from our sugar cookies, spread it on and let Zane decorate them. Well...I did the eyes and noses and he did most of the mouths. His favorite part was putting the chocolate chips on them because his finger always got a little bit of icing on the end that he HAD to lick off before putting the next chocolate chip on! Quick, easy, and yummy! Once the icing has dried I'm going to cut them like pies and send them to school tomorrow!

As I was mixing them up I was getting a little panicky that I wouldn't have enough and my thoughts wandered to a story Emily Watts relates: Basically, when one of her kids was in kindergarten she had volunteered to bring cookies to the Christmas party and had decided to make sugar cookie drums...only she didn't have a cookie cutter so decided to make her own pattern....which ended up being a little, um, large. And THEN she PIPED on the decorating...and was devastated when the kids didn't stop to admire - just dug in. She had a great point to her story but the memory momentarily freaked me out because I thought that maybe what I had planned was going to end up being more complicated than I wanted it to be. I'm very glad that wasn't the case. And I got a chuckle out of the memory.

Tonight is our ward's trunk or treat...Rhett is having a nap so hopefully he'll be up for lots of fun and Zane has been vibrating ALL day. Hopefully I get some pics!

Time flies when you're having fun!

This week has just flown by! Lots of fun things have happened and Thursday night Cliff's family arrived (minus Jamie and Amber). I let the kids stay up and wait until Cliff got home (late night with the sale) and after the kids were settled we watched the new Indiana Jones movie. Lots of fun but we stayed up WAY too late for how early my kids get up. Oh well. After a huge breakfast we got ready for the day and hung out a bit before Grandma and Auntie Rikki took the kids to Walmart. I finished Grandma's birthday cake and was putting the buns on pans when they got back with their new treasures: Jedi guns with sound effects! They LOVE them and I think their great....Daddy has a new rule though: No triggers until after everyone is awake in the morning! Apparently he didn't get a lot of sleep this morning because that's all he could hear. For the very rare once I slept through the noise. I'm blaming it on exhaustion. But back our fun times! I made buns and beef for lunch because mom LOVES my home made buns and we added in the veggies and stuff Cliff brought home from the sale. After being way too full from all the food we let Grandma open her presents. (Her birthday was last weekend) Well, she got to watch at least! Then the cake. I made Skor cake and we put 20 candles on it. Cliff got them all lit, we started singing Happy Birthday and before we finished the song the candles were out! Rhett started blowing and Zane joined in. 3 good blows later no more flames. I was laughing to hard to finish singing! We all ate HUGE pieces of cake and then watched Iron Man. Zane quickly lost interest - I was glad because I really didn't like it all that much. Rhett fell asleep in the first 5 minutes and slept for almost 3 hours and the rest of us made it through. We finished off our time together by going to Kelsey's for supper. I was really glad that I had thought to call and make a reservation because there were 8 of us and we would have been waiting forever otherwise! We had lots of fun with Grandma and Grandpa and the aunties!

Today the kids and I made sugar cookies. Other than that we've been extremely lazy. Rhett and I had a nap on the couch - his much longer than mine - and I've spent A LOT of time on the computer this afternoon.

Tonight is Stake Conference adult session - I think our plan is for Cliff to go tonight and me to stay home with the kiddlets. And then tomorrow Cliff is heading to Edmonton for Trail's sale there so it's me and kiddos alone for Stake Conference. I'm a little scared. That's a long time to keep the two of them quiet, occupied and happy by myself on hard chairs. Hopefully it goes well!

My new Favorite thing..

Is the SELF-CLEAN button on my oven. I've had the thing for a year now and have never used it. After cooking my turkey without anything over it (the first and last time I EVER do that ) my oven was disgusting. And any time I used it my whole house smelled like burnt turkey. Ugh. Anyways, after reading in my book what exactly I had to do (press 2 whole buttons and wait) I decided to go for it. W-O-W. When it was done and cooled off it took me 30 seconds to wipe out the ash stuff and voila - an oven that looks fabulous! I'm in love. Of course I called Cliff at work and thanked him profusely for buying me an oven that would do this for me - gotta give credit where credit is due. I'll never ever ever go back.

The last couple days I feel like I've been nesting - weird since I'm only 21 weeks but my house is looking great! Monday we had a family home evening on keeping our homes neat and clean and organized and talked about how Heavenly Father wants our homes to be like Temples. We talked about how inside the temples everything is neat and clean and put away, etc. Earlier in the day I really de-junked the toys and made some labels for different baskets and stuff. The rule is now at the end of the day the boys help to clean up. Anything they don't want to clean up or they leave behind for mom to do after they're in bed goes in a garbage bag and I'll give it to kids without toys. So far, so good.

Daddy and the boys did not clean up tonight....they were too busy carving a pumpkin! One of the sales guys at work brought Cliff this huge pumpkin that was already scooped out so all they had to do was carve it. I was at a baby shower and apparently Rhett was into the pumpkin thing until it got a face...then he walked around saying "scared, scared". We'll see how it goes tomorrow!

The kids have been busy busy pretending up a storm. The other day they were both running around in spider man suites, we've had pirates, ninjas, cowboys, superheroes....well you get the picture. Rhett has been carrying around 2 pez dispensers lately - they are his 'robots' and he just LOVES them right now. Zane loves transformers, spider man, and star wars. The top love depends on the day.

So here's some pics to wind up the post!

Recent Happenings....

We had originally planned on NOT doing a big dinner for Thanksgiving - we stayed here in Sylvan - and were just going to do something fun on Monday with Robison's - I'll get to that in a minute. Then my oh so lovable hubby batted his eyes at me and said "I'd really like Turkey for Thanksgiving". Now, if you've read my 100th post you might remember "cooking a turkey" as one of the things I listed as wanting to do. After multiple phone calls to both moms, some last minute shopping with the kidlets and some laughs I can proudly say that I cooked a turkey on Sunday. It was a little dry, the drippings were burnt (hazard of leaving bird cooking while attending all 3 hours of church - sigh) so the gravy was gross but otherwise a success. Made great turkey buns and soup as well! While I was washing it out I was a little grosses out - the smell and me prego was a challenge. Zane covered his eyes and said "eww gross. Dad, I can't watch!" Rhett just watched. I also made banana cream pie and we had Pratts over after supper to help us eat them. Oh, so yummy. Actually considering making more this weekend.

Monday we were fairly lazy. Robison's came over and we had a really fun backwards dinner - started with ice cream sundaes and ended with BBQ hamburgers and chips. The kids were in HEAVEN! We let them eat as much ice cream and chips as they wanted. We played games, hung out and enjoyed the time together.

Next excitement came in the form of wearing a holter all day yesterday. Something to record my heart all day long. Oh, and the trip to emerg with Zane that lasted 8 hours. Poor kid has a virus in his digestive track which equalled tummy full of gas and PAIN! They ended up giving the poor kid morphine after trying unsuccessfully to get an IV into him. But, it finally got his pain under control and I was finally able to take him home just after midnight. We've had a couple of long nights around here! Thankfully, he's keeping things down, pain free and happy today.

I'm sure I'm going to remember things that I wanted to post about a little while later....

Thankful

I am thankful that my husband is a worthy priesthood holder who is willing to use his priesthood to bless our family.
Rhett has NEVER been a good sleeper. Everyone who knows us or who has read this blog for awhile knows that. But lately it's gotten even worse. He spends the majority of the night tossing and turning, crying out in his sleep, and waking up in full tantrums. Nothing I've tried has helped. I finally (why am I so slow sometimes?) prayed about it. And felt strongly that he needed a blessing. Cliff gave him a blessing tonight before bedtime and blessed him with peaceful sleep, to not feel that he needed to be worried about someone or something "getting" him and that he would learn to sleep through the night. I am very hopeful that this will help Rhett and in turn help me. This prego mama really needs some sleep before the next
non-sleeper Johnson arrives!

Just when you think you're home free...

You see your doctor for your checkup and find out you gained a schwack of weight last month AND you have a heart murmur that may or may not be something. So, I'm getting an EKG this week, wearing a heart monitor for 24 hours next week and have an ecocardiogram scheduled for November 18 unless my doc thinks that's too long and decides to pull strings and bump it up. The nurse at the front who was booking everything seemed to think that was a good possibility. I'm not too worried about having a murmur - did some reading. More worried that the big weight gain is going to lead to diabetes again and don't know what that plus a heart murmur equals in terms of complications. My diabetes screen is at the end of the month and hopefully we'll know more about the murmur by then to. So, until then I just sit and wait. And that's what I know. Cheers!

Appropriate

I have been playing around with different ideas for a new title for my blog because I was sure that this baby was going to be a girl and then "The Life and Times of Me and the Boys" wouldn't work very well anymore. Are you wondering what I've come up with? Here's the new and improved title: "The Life and Times of Me and the Boys" Yep. No change. Thanks to the wonderful ultrasound technology we found out that we are expecting a BLUE bundle and not PINK one like I thought. To put it mildly, we were shocked. But that only lasted for a few seconds before I was overjoyed. Three boys together are going to be so much fun! Not to mention cheaper in the wardrobe department....at least for now. 3 teenage boys in the house at once is going to be rough on the food budget. Oh well. Like I said, it's going to be lots of fun and we're really excited to welcome the new little blue one into our family. Zane thinks it's really cool that he's getting another baby brother and wanted to see the pictures from the ultrasound. Rhett will tell you where our baby is (in my tummy) but when I ask him if he wants a baby brother he says 'no'. Anyways, everything checked out GREAT at the ultrasound. He's measuring right where he should be according to my dates and the placenta and fluid are great. Heart's great and everything else is accounted for!
We've had lots of people ask us if that means we'll try one more time for a girl. Umm, no. We are done at 3. And no, I don't think I'll change my mind. We are both happy with 3 - even without a girl. I'll just have to wait for daughter-in-laws and grandbabies to do all the fun girlie stuff with. And maybe I'll get lucky and have some nieces before then!
On a different note, Monday Cliff turned 30! We had a big party for him last night. And by big I mean almost 30 adults and a handful of babies here at our house for Rock Band and lots of yummy food. We took our kids to Allred's and had a babysitter for both sets of kids. It worked really great - minus the fact that they didn't go to sleep until they were home at 11:00. Ugg. And then they were up at 7:00. It's been a long day here!
So, that's about all that's new in our world. Oh, and if you see my dad don't tell him we're having a boy. He doesn't want to know!