This is your cue to hang out with us

Hello Everyone! I can no longer just pretend that life is going on as normal at our house...

We are moving! Especially those in Utah, we would love to get together with you before we pack up and out of here in December or January. Unfortunately, it is a surprise where we are going, but we can tell you that it is an International location. We are SO EXCITED about it! We are also very ancy to tell you where you will all be coming to visit us for your next vacation.

It may be as late as December until we can disclose any further details, but to narrow it down, I have included a handy poll for you to give your best guess as to where it might be. Can't wait to see you all in __________!

PS: Sorry to those of you who still think we are going to Texas!

We Have Chicklets -I mean teeth!

I have been meaning to post about Gabe's teeth for a week or two. I didn't get around to taking a pic while he had a fresh shirt on, as I wanted a pic sans the drool ring-around-the-collar. I will try to get a better view of his teeth, it's kind of hard since he doesn't show them off too much. He has a bigger gap than David Letterman, but his little chicklets are so cute!

When Laine teething, she got one tooth on the top and one tooth on the bottom so she looked like the spawn of Cletus the slack-jawwed yokel. When the other top and bottom tooth grew in, she too had chicklets for a while. A year later I looked at her one day and realized they had grown together, and she had the beautiful smile she has today.

Now she thinks they are jammies

Okay, so a few weeks ago I posted a post that caught some people's attention. While some thought it was completely rational and normal, others thought it was quite wierd. I dressed Laine in this dress on Saturday night in attempts to help us get to church closer to on time.

So, I guess I ruined the punchline for myself by the obvious title ... Last night she asked to wear the dress when getting ready for bed, since now she thinks the dress is jammies. Here she is eating her cereal this morning.

Many wondered if this did infact help us and problem. Sadly, at the time, no. Ben was out of town and my sis Kristine stayed with us for the weekend. I got up and started getting ready but the kids still weren't awake at 8:59. So rather than wake them, I thought a GREAT idea would be for me to have the week off and acutally be able to pay attention during Sacrament Meeting. Kristine stayed back (I don't think she minded having the week off either) with the kids and when I came home during the Sunday School hour, Laine was just barely waking up (10:20) and Gabe was still sleeping. He finally woke up at 10:45, we got him dressed and fed in a jif and were out the door, barely making it to Relief Society on time.

Now that pre-school has started, the kids are on a much earlier schedule that would have been perfect for 9:00 church. However, as of last week our ward was assigned a new and wonderful 8:00 slot, so we are back to square one.

Time for a new high chair?

Those of you who know me well will say that nothing has ever sounded like me more than what you are about to read.

So a couple of weeks ago I was getting sick of strapping Gabe in his chair for meal times. It was such an annoying waste of time, since he looked like he had grown big enough to not slip through and fall to the ground. So I stopped strapping him in but then the strap was always in the way and CAKED with food. So I did what seemed like the only reasonable thing to do at the time, and cut the strap out. Now we are plagued with this little ditty of a problem:

This one happened when I told him to sit down and he actually tried to obey,

but didn't quite get it right. The next three kind of explain themselves.

Just crown me Mother of the Year and get it overwith...

PS: I also found the strap holding the infant headrest in my stroller annoying and cut the whole thing out too

Hot off the Garlic Press

Hello friends,

I just wanted to let you know I have a new 2nd blog I am going to attempt. I love having the Rileyfamily blog as our family journal and to keep in touch with friends and family. However I am going to use my personal blog to include different things I won't include here, mainly relating to the kitchen, home and family.

I don't want to be a selfish blog hoarder with 2 blogs, but if you can find it in your heart to embrace two blogs from the Riley's, then there is a little blog called "Hot off the Garlic Press" waiting just for you.



http://hotgarlic.blogspot.com/

Sweetest Gabe!

Our little Gabe is the sweetest boy and we just love him so much! He has been the best, easiest baby ever. He LOVES life and loves to smile and laugh. Whenever he is eating, he sits and waits for me to look over and make eye contact so we can laugh and smile together. It is the funniest thing ever to peek over at him going "come on Mom, look over here, look at me, let's laugh together!"

He loves to be happy, wiggle, climb everything, and fart while being oblivious to it. He loves for Mom or Dad to be a human jungle gym for him to scale. His second love is food, he's an eater. It takes him about 10 seconds to down a banana whole (his favorite food), and that is with no teeth! He is a little champ!

Girl's gotta earn her keep

Yesterday I took on the brave task of detailing and washing my car. It is not a chore I look forward to, but do find that I enjoy it once I've stopped dreading it and just get going. I do LOVE driving a clean car (no, Dad, that was not a joke) and have ususally done my best at maintaining a clean car (seriously Dad, stop laughing!)


After I cleaned and vacummed the car all out, I went home to wash it myself, as I recently invested in all of the things needed to wash and detail your own car (I already had the armour-all and tire wet OF COURSE, gotta love that shine!).

Laine was VERY excited about getting to help. I got out all of the stuff to wash it, my new brushes and soaps and a bucket and towels. Then something came up and I had to do some work inside. While I as occupied, Laine was making calls on her "cell phone". I heard her call Daddy, she was having this pretend conversation with him telling him all about how Mommy and Laine were going to wash the car together. She was so excited! Even today she still has not stopped talking about it and wants to wash the car again.


Here she is scrubbing, she really puts her back into it



I gave her a 15 minute (unpaid) lunchbreak


Plummer!

She buffed it to a nice sheen, thanks Laine!

Another fun weekend

This weekend was a lot of fun. Sweetest Aunt Katie came down and watched the kids while Ben and I went on a date Friday night. We went to Market Street with Jason and Kim Norton, it was so fun, should have brought my camera!

Saturday we wanted to go do something fun as a family Chuck E. Cheese was it! Ben decided to ride his bike and drop it off at the cycle shop for a tune-up, so Katie and I followed with the kids in tow a few minutes later. I was supposed to bring Ben's flip-flops, as he only had his cycle shoes. However, I actually forgot to bring them. But by the time that we discovered this we were too far into the trip and didn't want to turn around and go all the way home. So after some quick thinking we came up with a soloution...

Katie happened to have a 2nd pair of shoes! So Ben wore my flipflops (I know most men would not be trilled to be wearing women's flip-flops in public, but for those you who know Ben, you know he was especially not excited about it, which made it all the funnier for me!)

This pic doesn't really capture that Katie's shoes were 10 sizes too big for me and my flops were 10 sizes too small for Ben. I kept forgetting how ridiculous we looked, but then every time I would remember and look down and see Ben in my shoes with his heel hanging off the back 3 inches I would just lose it!

Here is Laine attempting ski-ball again. The girl was lethal! I am surprised we walked out of there without serious injuries and a lawsuit on our hands. She threw the ball a coupled of times and it sailed 5 lanes over each time before we could get her to stop and give her some ski-ball tutorials.

Cute Gabe loving the pizza. As for me, I could barely gag it down, but he sure seemed to like it.

Can't wait to go again (in a few months / years!)

Our Preschool Girl!

Laine started preschool 2 weeks ago, and these first pics are of her very first day. I wanted to wait to post until she got her new backpack. Poor Laine has been lugging around this huge duffel because her backpack I ordered did not come for 2 1/2 weeks!

Laine goes to Lisa's Learning Center Preschool and loves her teacher Miss Lisa. It is fun to think of her at school having fun with the kids and learning. Here she is going to preschool this morning.

The backpack worth the wait! It's the perfect little size and Laine already wants to take it with her everywhere she goes, and of course wear it around the house for fun. Since she can read her name and is obsessed with herself (she refers to herself in the 3rd person, or is it first person? She says, "Laine needs a drink, Laine is going to do it.") she LOVES that she can see her name on it and know it is "Laine's"

"Chocolate poo-poo"

Tonight's bath time kind of reminded me of Caddyshack, yeah, you know the part, only it wasn't a Baby Ruth.

I put the kids in the big tub in our room so that I could get some organizing done in my bedroom and still see and hear the kids. They were having a great time, and playing so well, which is unusual as Laine usually tries to drown Gabe within the first few minutes. If not that, she at least hoards all the toys and takes away any toys that Gabe managed to grab so that he cries. Needless to say, they usually just bathe separately these days.

Anyway, a while later I hear Laine freaking out, which is hysterical. I am sorry, it makes me laugh so hard when my child is in such distress. The way she goes apey over the silliest things, anyone who knows her well knows what I am talking about. Anyway, she is screaming, "the toys, the toys! oh no, the toys! I ask what is happening as I am running in and, she said "Gabe went poopoo in the tub!" And, though she hasn't seen Caddyshack herself, continues, "Oh no, Gabe's chocolate poo poo is getting the toys!" It was so funny, it made cleaning it up not as bad.




Above are pics of the bath, post drainage and proper sanitation of the tub and toys.

Labor Day Fun -hitting a new low

Here is a pic as evidence of the fun we had over Labor Day weekend, except that we didn't have our camera out when the real fun started. Keep reading.

So we went down to St. George for the weekend. Hit the shopping, hit the pool, hit the food, saw the grandparents... We stayed at the Riley's house while they were in Payson, which was so fun. It was especially fun for Ben and I since we spent the first part of our honeymoon there. Needless to say it would have been more fun to relive the memories sans the kids!


Sunday night we headed up to Payson for Onion days with the Riley's. I was feeling some serious rumblings, and Gabe was not feeling good either. I tried to shrug it off, but by the middle of the night Gabe and I were both throwing up. Morning came and I was only feeling worse. Everyone went to the parade. Ben stayed back to take care of me, which was so sweet of him. By this time I was feeling worse for Ben than for me. He had so looked forward to all the fun of Onion Days that he had missed since we had been gone the last 4 years!

I mustered up all of my strength to make it to the Ellsworth Family Party at GG's. I was doing pretty well for a while, even got some watermelon down. I was thinking in my mind how embarrassing it would be though, if I got sick again and had to make a run for it. There would be no where to go. It was a maze to get inside the house, and too many people would be in the way. I would have to puke in the front yard in front of everybody. I willed myself to keep the food down. But then the sun was kind of hot and my heart started racing. I looked over at Ben and told him I was not doing well. I said, "I'm going to pass out" and he ran over, caught me just as I did in fact pass out. He carried me to the grass where I woke up puking my guts out. So embarrassing! I hit a definite new low in my life, passing out and puking in the front yard at a family party.

When we came home later that afternoon, Ben was so, so great. He unloaded the car, unpacked everything, and took care of the kids while I continued to try to sleep it off. What a guy! His selflessness really turned the day around for me. I woke up and the kids had been fed and were asleep and so we got to relax and cap the day off with a movie. I am feeling much better now, thanks!