Turkey Holiday Festivities

Oh man, it was so nice to have Jake home and all to ourselves for 4 whole days! The best part was that I got to sleep in for 2 of those days. It was so heavenly! Since that weekend Cooper has constantly been asking for daddy and Luke has 100% become a daddy's boy--which is fine by me! We had lots of fun with a house packed full of 30 guests--us Jewkes just don't know how to go small! I volunteered to do the favors (a Mayflower boat made out of clay and a sail that I forgot to take a pic of) and the centerpiece which I thought turned out rather nicely.

(This is Cooper doing his own imitation of the "boats" that I was making) Turkey was eaten, pie was hoarded, and Rock Band was rocked!The next day we made sugar cookies and had tons of fun at some all-in-one entertainment place. They had a driving range, batting cages, arcade games, air hockey, and a jungle gym to die for. Even Luker learned to love it after a good hour of coercion. Cooper was so tuckered out that he fell asleep on Jake's shoulder at El Charro after playing. That is pretty much a once-in-a-lifetime experience.Luke and cousin Jonah (so funny!):We spent Saturday and Sunday decorating for Xmas and resting. It was such a fun holiday that it really was hard to face reality again on Monday. Besides, I think I spent several days without changing a single stinky diaper. I love Jake!

In an effort to make my blog more interesting...

8- things Tag
8 TV SHOWS I WATCH...
1-The Office
2-Survivor
3-America's Next Top Model
4-The Amazing Race
5-Gossip Girl ( I know, pathetic)
6-90210 (another pathetic
7-Chuck
8-Grey's Anatomy

8 THINGS I DID YESTERDAY...
1-decorated for XMAS!
2-tossed and turned ALL night because my shoulder kept falling asleep and I went to the bathroom 3 times
3-watched "Notting Hill" twice and didn't even want to watch it the first time
4-got dominated in Dominoes by Jake
5-cleaned 2 dental offices
6-got gas for under $30!!!
7-played the piano again (helped Claire practice for a church performance)
8-truly felt elation to see Luke finally crawl like a normal child!

8 THINGS I AM LOOKING FORWARD TO...
1-getting a full night's sleep after the new baby that hasn't come yet sleeps through the night!
2-not having to go to the bathroom all night
3-standing up without contracting
4-playing volleyball again without feeling like my pubic bone is being ripped out
5-Lukey walking
6-Jake going to dental school
7-food stamps when we go to dental school:)
8-hopefully losing some weight after the baby

8 THINGS ON MY WISH LIST-
1-manicure
2-pedicure
3-massage
4-gym membership
5-nothing so we can pay off debt quicker
6-fit into size 8 again-hah! yeah right! actually, I'm not picky I'll even go with a 10!
7-Jake will get into medical school
8-Ethan will not be colicky

8 PEOPLE I TAG...
1-no one unless they want to

Mummies and Grim Reapers Galore!

We FINALLY did our murder mystery!

It's been so long in the planning it felt great to finally do it. We had 15 brave friends over, dressed to the 9's in various monster get-up's. We had fun interrogating each other murdering each other, and of course accusing each other of hideous crimes such as murder, robbery, manipulation, selling toad toenails, living in the Glob Lagoon. Can you imagine? It was so fun and I'm so appreciative to Claire for all of her help and to our friends for showing up and doing something outside of their comfort zones! The most shocking revelation of the night: Tamara Daniel and Deahl Wilson have some ghetto in their souls!

He's Illegally Legal!

Well, it is official! Luke Nelson Nelson is now Luke Nelson Hutchings! Yeah! A long, long journey finally come to a close. All we had to do was swear that we were at last 25 years old and married and that we were financially and mentally stable (I lied:)) and then he was announced ours! It was a great experience and I am so thrilled that he is legally a Hutchings now! We are going to seal him on January 10th and then bless him on January 11th, as well as Ethan. The reason he is "illegally legal" is because one of our papers was completed in FL but was supposed to be completed in GA, but apparently it wasn't that big of a deal. Congrats to us! Oh yeah, 2 things: Coop is not picking his nose he is pointing and we later found out that our judge was a finalist on "Survivor".

I LOVE going to Time Out

I never thought those words would come out of my mouth-but an adult time out was just what I needed! I went to Nashville, TN, with Claire and Meredith this weekend for Time Out for Women and we reveled in the freedom and selfishness that we were able to embrace for 3 whole days! We had great speakers/singers but more than anything we had great food! Seriously, it was exactly what I needed to take some time for myself and think about self-improvement and how to be a better person/mom/wife. I've set a lot of goals for myself but we'll see how long those last. On Saturday night we toured the massively chaotic town of Nashville and saw an amazing hotel/mall/Opryland. We spent about 10 minutes in each place and then decided we were way too tired to do anything more and just wanted to sleep. However, it took us about 3 hours to find a place to eat (long story) so we got back to the hotel in time to go to sleep. I won't even tell you about the frat parties our next-door neighbors had ALL night long both nights we were there--let's just say someone went PSYCHO while strung out on LSD or something at 4 in the morning. Anyhow, it was great but I thoroughly enjoyed coming back home and seeing all 3 of my honey's! I missed them so much--now I'm wondering why!! Haha! Just kidding!

(This is the outside of the really extravagant hotel we toured--the inside just couldn't be captured sufficiently.)

Fire Trucks Are So Cool

We just discovered the coolest library story time place in Senoia. They spend about an hour every week and read you stories, have a craft/activity, and then a snack. The best part is--it's all for free! Talk about a cheap mormon girl's dream come true!! This last week they had a fire safety week and even brought a fire truck to boot! It was super cool and I think Cooper liked it as much as his mommy!

I'm no Einstein, but...

Okay, my maternity pants are driving me CRAZY and I finally decided to do something about it. I went to Wal-mart and got a frumpy pair of suspenders and I am in 7th Heaven! No more pulling and tugging while trying to hold both my kids! Literally, my pants fell completely down the other day while I was in the middle of changing a diaper. Thank heavens I was just in my room. Now, of course I look nothing like this girl in my suspenders, but believe me it's a better picture than if I took one of myself. Just imagine-garments, bra, suspenders, undershirt, overshirt--that is so many layers! Hopefully Jake still thinks I'm sexy!!

Bet You've Never Done This Before

I promised Cooper a bonfire this last Friday but it started raining just when we were about to go out and collect firewood. In my efforts to be a good mom I told him we would take him on a truck ride through the pastures for fun instead! Yeah--I'm awesome! Well, unbeknownst to me there was a huge ravine that I hit going just short of 30 MPH and I looked over in fear as I saw my baby's head (and Jake's head) bouncing relentlessly through the cab of the truck. Cooper's head broke the windshield, but miraculously he didn't even have a bump to show for it. Jake was in more pain than him from hitting his head on the ceiling. Yeah, I'm an awesome mom and I had nightmares all night to show for it. Yes, I am being sarcastic for those who don't know my humor. :)

Insanity

Most days are really, really good and then 5 or 6 comes around and it seems like every shred of my sanity and "niceness" get thrown out the window. It seems like the only thing I can do is sit and stare at the clock and wait for 6:30 to roll around so Jake can finally get home and my children will have a nice parent again. Then when it's Monday or Wednesday I have to keep telling myself to stay sane even though Jake doesn't even get home in time to see the kids. For example, last night he rolled in around 11:30. Now, who am I to complain when he's keeping crazy hours like that? I know, I should be happy that I have 2 beautifully wonderful children. Usually I am but right now I'm hoping for a little mommy time. Let me give you an example of my evening: Jake calls to tell me he won't be home until closer to 7:30 instead of 6:30--I try to hold in my frustration because I really feel sorry for his long days and drives, Cooper took a pen to my computer screen, while Luke is screaming from lack of being held Claire couldn't get my printer to work an hour before she needed copies and in our hurry to fix it we forgot about Cooper and Lincoln being outside, 20 minutes later we realize it and start outside to find them only to see 2 men driving down our driveway with our 2 yr olds in tow...yes, they had walked to the road and were screaming and crying as lost boys do and we're hoping these men don't call DFCS on us, now I'm watching all 4 kids and posting a blog instead of responsibly cooking dinner for hungry mouths. Oh well, they'll survive. I feel better already. Off to cook some boxed dinner for the monkeys!

FINALLY, Halloween is OVER!

Okay, don't get me wrong, I LOVE Halloween but it all seemed a bit much this year. I took the kids trick-or-treating for the 4th and final time last night and put their costumes on for the 5th and final time last night. I don't remember going trick-or-treating but once in my days, and that was on the actual day of Halloween. I think that I will make a resolution to only go on Halloween and also to the ward trunk-or-treat next year. That's it! I certainly don't want all that delicious candy sitting around just tempting me to try "just one more". Anyhow, we really did have fun and now that I've vented I'll talk about all of the good of the spooky holiday!We had a lot of fun getting together with friends for a spooky dinner/bbq. Then we all loaded up (literally loaded up in a trailer) and haunted the friendly neighborhoods. Surprisingly there weren't that many fellow trick-or-treaters out...which is another thing that's changed since my day...but we still had a blast walking around and begging strangers for a measly treat. Cooper had the tendency to walk straight into the houses of all these strangers--I guess I should teach him about keeping a safe distance from strangers:). We really did have fun and a big thank you to David and Kenda for organizing it all.The best part of the evening came after we got home. As Jake and I were changing Luke into his PJ's we noticed that Cooper was doing something very strange. Still in his costume, he was meticulously taking out every piece of candy and labeling it ("mamma treat" for big pieces and "baby treat" for small pieces) and then categorizing them and placing them in piles of similar candies. He had these 4 hershey kisses lined up in a row and one tipped over and he quickly picked it up and made sure it was sitting in a straight line with all of the other ones. It was so entertaining to watch and he was totally oblivious to us laughing at his peculiar behavior. Don't get me wrong, I am very grateful for an organized and clean kid, but is this bordering on OCD? I thought he took after me for being overly obsessive about being organized but then Jake related the following story. When he was younger he had a bookshelf with all of his toys: GI Joes, Transformers, etc. He would cut the picture of each of his toys out of catalogs and tape them to the bookshelf so that he would know exactly where to place each of his toys when he was cleaning up. Weird, huh? I guess Cooper takes after him. Well, after we had a good laugh we put them both to bed and started in on eating the best treats of the night! If Cooper only knew that all of his hard work went to mommy and daddy's tummies!
We've already taken down all of our Halloween decos and have Thanksgiving decos out and about. Now, what I can deal with is 4 different days of Thanksgiving and banana cream pies!