Our Weekend

Friday night was John's company party. I didn't think it would be that great, so when I realized I forgot the camera on the way out to the car I didn't go back into get it. I totally should have!!! I'm kicking myself! That's why you get to see stock photos instead :) - Enjoy!They rented a huge, grassy field and had the foresight to spray it for chiggers! Thank GOODNESS because we were all wearing sandals. I hear they are nasty and itch like crazy. To ward off all the other bugs they provided OFF insect repellent. These 2 things alone were enough to make me (almost) not care that they were having it outside in the middle of a hot, humid summer. Almost.

Walking onto the field Marshall immediately spotted a mechanical bull, a rock climbing wall, a huge bounce slide, a bounce house, a bounce basketball hoop, and a nacho and snow cone stand. The kid was in heaven!

While we waited for dinner to be served the boys stood in line for the best balloon artist anyone had ever seen. This guy was doing Buzz Lightyears, Woodys, and even a working basketball hoop headband. It was awesome!! Marshall chose a Spiderman and John got Coen a 3 1/2 ft. Kermit the Frog. Coen absolutely loved it until he accidentally dropped it on the grass. When it popped it scared him and he wouldn't come near it the rest of the night. Luckily Marshall was too busy bouncing that he didn't notice Coen wearing Spiderman around his shoulders in lieu of Kermie.
John and I enjoyed our first taste of the famous Kansas City barbeque we keep hearing about. It was pretty tasty!!

Next up John took it upon himself to get him and Coen matching tattoos around their wrists. It was so cute and I really wish I had had my camera for it. Coen didn't know what to think.

At one point Marshall came over to me and told me he had decided he wanted to try the mechanical bull. So after I helped him up, I told the controller guy to go slow and be easy on him. Well, it wasn't gentle enough and Marshall kinda freaked out. After getting him down we went over to get him a snow cone.
Then it was time for the RAFFLE to begin!! The best part of any company party, right? They gave away a bunch of gift cards to local restaurants and entertainment venues and then they called John's name! Woohoo!!!! We WON a date night for two to a movie & dinner place at a new shopping center (similar to Gateway). I'm so excited to use it!!!


I started hearing rumors of a fireworks display and I heard someone price-drop what they had spent on it. Let's just say my jaw hit the chigger-free grass. When it started getting dark they began passing out the most comfortable sweatshirt material blankets with the company logo on them along with 3D fireworks glasses, and juice boxes and candy bags for the kiddos. The blankets were NOT for warmth - OH NO! At 1o:30 PM on our way home I saw the temperature on a sign - it was 98 degrees still!!! I broke a sweat going from the car to the door when we got home that's how humid it is.

But I digress. So we lay on the blanket, using John's new droid to star gaze. We found Saturn, all aglow and beheld a golden harvest moon. Then. The lights went out. And the fireworks began. Digressing again...As a kid I loved the fireworks. It was a magical sight to behold. I loved how the crowd at the Oakley Rodeo would "ooh" and "aah" together as each burst of color lit up the darkened sky. It was breathtaking and by far my favorite part (aside from being with my family). I don't know what it is, if I'm getting older or if the rodeo just doesn't put as much into it as they used to, but the fireworks have discouraged me. At times I want to leave before they start so I can beat the crowd out of the parking lot and the 2-lane road out of town. I do enjoy watching Marshall experience like I used to, but I leave feeling jipped and wanting that magic that I experienced as a kid to come back. Then BOOM!!! Tonight it did! I watched the fireworks display like I had as a child. With awe and wonder and smiling from ear to ear. Not only was the display EXTREMELY well put together, but watching fireworks in 3D is a TOTALLY AWESOME EXPERIENCE!!! It was SO FREAKING COOL!!!! As each tiny shimmer burst from the epicenter and started falling, it would leave a rainbow of color in it's wake. There are no words to describe it. I am googling the glasses right after this post and ordering some for the Marshall family to take to the rodeo. You just can't watch fireworks the old-school way after seeing them in 3D. Do the little kid in you a favor and GET SOME 3D FIREWORKS GLASSES!



Saturday morning, John took Marshall to a Lowe's kids' workshop to build a Monster Truck with wood, a hammer, and nails. He came home with an apron, a Monster Truck patch for me to sew on, and a sense of pride for having built something with his own hands. It was sweet.


My Broadway moment came when John ran to get lunch. The boys and I were playing on the bed. Marshall loves to hide under the covers and pretend he's an animal and I'm the hunter. This particular day he chose to be a lion in the jungle. I was the hunter. He was hiding from me under a "rock" aka the bed sheet. Well, not only did I play the role of hunter with gusto, I composed a musical about it pro-sport announcer style. I rock.

The boys loved it! Coen tried to sing along and Marshall thought it was hilarious, especially the part when he started "chasing" me through the jungle and I "ran" with my legs, pounding the bed as I went, jiggling the mattress for him and Coen, singing about being chased by a lion the whole time. When John came home and heard a sample of it, well, let's just say my Lion Hunter/Singer Pride was ruined. At least the boys liked it.

After lunch John went to write his talk for sacrament meeting stall on writing his talk by asking me to come snuggle in bed with him for a few minutes where we were quickly joined by the boys. So we lazed around in bed some more (please tell me we're not the only ones who have spent a Saturday afternoon doing this?) as a family, playing tickle fight and being extremely funny. At one point someone started telling knock-knock jokes. Marshall tells the most nonsensical jokes you've ever heard. Even the simplest knock-knocks are lost on him. (Hmm, does this sound like anyone else we know? Yes. He's totally my kid.) When John tried to explain jokes and puns, Marshall lost it and stormed off. The fun was over.


It was time to go to the church for a tour anyway. The missionaries asked us to come up for a tour so we could start going through with them when they bring non-members on it. Coen's favorite part was re-arranging all the books in the Relief Society/Baptismal Font room. The concise placement of every other seat just didn't suit his desire to have them ALL stacked in the middle seat of the middle row.



When we f i n a l l y got home (the church is 20 minutes, tour was 30, picking up lunch for the elders then bringing it back to the church was another 15, then 20 back home) Coen took a nap while a very tired (from the party the night before) Marshall watched a movie.


Finally after bath and bed time John was able to focus on his talk. At 2:00 am when he went to print it panic set in as our printer refused to print an ALL BLACK SHEET because we were out of YELLOW INK. Makes TOTAL sense, huh?! One perk to knowing the bishop from work, you have his email address. So John emailed him, asking if he could print it for him. And since John had aided the bishop in giving him a ride to work this week, the bishop came to the rescue and saved John's day (not that he wouldn't have anyway).



I was so proud of myself for getting up and ready and having the boys dressed and on time! I usually enlist John's help in getting the kids ready but I knew he would be busy organizing his thoughts and preparing his clothes so I set my alarm extra early (we have 9:00 church and it's not just up the street anymore) and I let him do his thing while I took care of everything else. John gave a fabulous talk. He totally rocked it!! I'm so proud of you, honey!



I made it through my first week of teaching nursery - hallelujah! I have my opinions on being in there but I'm trying to be a good sport and make the most of it. The kids are cute and for the most part pretty well adjusted to the nursery routine. It's presented me with a great opportunity to introduce myself to other moms with young kids and for that I am grateful. Hopefully I'll be able to form some new friendships pretty soon. I was invited by the former nursery teacher to come to Eclipse with some girls from the ward on opening night, so I'm excited about that!

Tonight we had family movie night. I read this blog and the mom does popcorn and smoothies for dinner on Sunday for family movie night. How genius is that?! We watched Astro Boy. Marshall was very upset because he wanted some Mario movie that I refused to get. But he ended up loving Astro Boy. I loved it. Marshall loved it. John loved it. It was a night full of love.


And that about sums up our weekend :) Hope you enjoyed!!

"I Love Clifford, the Big Red Dog!"

There is so much to do here! Every weekend offers dozens of options for new exploration in the city and surrounding areas. It is so much fun getting out and doing new things, seeing new places, meeting new people.
Like Clifford, the Big Red Dog. Hallmark's world headquarters are in the heart of downtown Kansas City and Crown Center is owned by them. It is a huge shopping mall, with a couple hotels attached, some fun restaurants, and huge fountains to play in outside (think Gateway times 5).
Anyway, Crown Center has a free Clifford exhibit there right now as well as a Clifford meet & greet photo op. So when we saw the overcast skies on Saturday morning we knew this would be good indoor fun. We walked all around the 3 stories of shops and stores to see what they had to offer. They had a fun Crayola store and a Crayola Cafe attached to it, a huge Hallmark store (of course), several boutiques and specialty stores as well as more common, well known stores. The restaurants looked fun, one had a miniature train going through the whole place in between tables and gave out conductor hats to kids who eat there.
After seeing Clifford we stopped at Sheridan's for custard...move over Nielson's!! This place has you beat.at least John looks cute ;)

my boys :)

tappin' out some tunes

charting the route

serious about safety, haha

baby on board!

this was a fun activity, you had to stack the sandcastle pieces by shape and color to get them to fit just right

I want one.

dog bones went up a conveyor belt into Clifford's dog bowl

all of the characters had mailboxes throughout the exhibit and there was even a post office and pretend mail or you could make your own. Marshall's was for Clifford, I love his emergent handwriting and drawing skills!!!

Coen has recently discovered the joy of sliding!

I thought Coen would completely freak out at being near a big red costumed animal but he did great and even gave Clifford's giant paw a high-five at the end

On the way home I sweet-talked my way into stopping at Walgreens and CVS. Luckily they are kitty corner from each other and not too far from home which makes my drug store deal addiction a little easier and more convenient. Plus Coen seriously had not a diaper to his name and it was the last day of the sale. This was a fun one!

2 stores + 2 transactions:
1 Gillette Fusion Razor ( LOVE these!) = .99
Energizer 4 pk = .99 each
2 Gillette Body Wash = I made $4
1 Nivea Body Wash = Free
2 Neutrogena Sunscreens and 2 Coppertone Sunscreens, these were the bulk of my purchases, but still a super sweet deal

But by far THE BEST DEAL:
3 packs Huggies + 4 Aveenos in 1 transaction totalling $1.21 after a $10 mail-in rebate

A Visit from the Birds

While getting ready for church on Sunday we looked outside to see these adorable birds visiting our adorable birdhouse!!! We hung it up weeks ago and Marshall has been anxiously awaiting a visit from some birds ever since. We're hoping Grandpa Bradley can identify them for us...

In other Sunday/churchy news...I (Nikki) was called to Nursery and put in charge of a playgroup and John is giving a talk this Sunday.

My Little Fishies

Marshall has loved the water since the day he was born! I'm telling you, this kid was born to be a swimmer. Every night when John gets home Marshall asks if he'll take him swimming before bed. John has been such a trooper, and usually obliges him. It's perfect because it wears him out SO WELL before bedtime!! Lucky for me, Coen loves the water too. I thought he would be completely uninhibited around the pool, but it turns out that he doesn't like going under unexpectedly. A little caution is a good thing to have when you're 1. The 1 1/2 ft. wading pool is absolutely PERFECT for him, though. He loooves it!! And the full size pool has a step along the whole south end of it that is perfect for him to perch on and throw the ball back and forth to me or Marshall. Our building is the closest you can get to the pool (per my request, of course!) but our unit is on the opposite side so we don't hear any of the noise from the pool. It's a match made in heaven :)

Marshall has told me repeatedly that his name is now
{Super Goggles Marshall}
I'm not to call him anything but that.I think he has to pee, what do you think?

Coen is such a ham! I don't know what all these hilarious faces are about, but they sure are cute! His favorite things to do are throw balls, catch balls, and run after balls (in OR out of the water).

Future Scientist of America

Last Spring I bought Marshall a science kit. He begs me to do an "ess-spear-imint" just about once a week and tells me that "scientist" is on his list of things he wants to be when he grows up, along with "sports player, rock star, doctor, and race car driver." Today we wrote on goldenrod paper in an acid and a base. He made a few lines in a base (baking soda & water) then "erased" the lines using an acid (citric acid & water). "Whoa!" was his reaction when he saw the red line changing back to goldenrod. The next step was to write a message with the acid, then go over the whole sheet with the base, making the "secret message" show up. It says "Hi Grammy." - It was a little hard for him to see the lines he'd already written.

He is just so stinking handsome!

At the end of the goldenrod experiment, he wanted more (he always does). So I added red cabbage powder to each solution (one turns blue, the other magenta) then at the same time he and I poured the 2 into a third cup and watched the reaction - something from a previous experiment, but always a favorite!

I went Targeting

Targeting: Saving a whole lot of money shopping at Target :-)

I'm a little behind on posting about deals...
Before we left Salt Lake I got "all" (haha, get it?) this for about $.67, just tax!!
K-Mart was doubling coupons (are they still?) to make these free!!

And today at Target I got all this for $67, and saved a whopping $107!!! That's a 62% savings!

Here's a run down:
Scrubbing Bubbles Extend A Clean Starter & Refills, 2 of each = $3.96 for all 4
1 Welch's White Grape Juice = $1.27
3 Huggies Wipes = $3.47
1 Pampers Wipes = FREE
2 Gallons Milk = $1.99 ea. (That's actually really good, milk here is usually around $4/gal and this WAS $2.99/gal but I had 2 $1 off milk coupons if you bought Kellog's cereal)
2 Tropicana Orange Juices = $2.99 ea. (the coupons for these were regional :P ) but buying them got me....
1 Dozen Eggs = FREE
13 boxes Frosted Mini Wheats = 1.49 ea. BECAUSE...A) Marshall loves the stuff and B) they include codes for FREE movie passes to Toy Story 3 and $5 worth of concessions!!! So guess what we're doing this weekend?? Did I mention we're SEEING TOY STORY 3 FOR FREE?!?! (note: you need 6 codes for each movie pass and 3 for the $5 concession, for a total of 15 codes needed (one of us will stay home with Coen) and I already had 2 boxes at home, so I needed 13 more. Luckily I had enough coupons from previous cereal box inserts!!) I estimate this alone will save us around $18 at the theater this weekend.
3 Eggos Waffles = $.75 each
2 J&J Baby Wash = $1.19 for 2
2 Ziploc Steam & Serve Bags = $.83 each
1 Dove Deoderant & 1 Dove Body Mist = FREE
12 Dannon Yogurts = $5.20 (because the boys eat this for bedtime snack with cottage cheese)
Cottage Cheese, Sour Cream, and Sponge - no special deal, we just needed them
Grapes = $.99/lb.
1 Nexcare Star Wars Bandaids = $1.19
2 Bagel Bites = $1.19 each
2 Wheat Thins = $1.50 each
2 Macaroni & Cheese = $1.25 for 2
4 Wonka Chocolate Bars (because after shopping at Target with 2 kids I need it) = $.50 each

I wanted to get some more free things but they were out, otherwise I would have a bigger percentage of savings. But I'm okay with 62%.

Stay tuned for my Walgreens and CVS deals...

The Children's Museum

With John off of work for Memorial Day, we decided to get out and explore! What better place to explore than at a Children's Museum? It's in Kansas City, but on the Kansas side about 30 minutes from us. We printed some coupons (of course!) so the kids were free. The museum is housed in an old school. Each room on the bottom floor contains a different area to explore. The rooms were bright and fun! The chalkboards had been painted bright colors and were then painted again with different diagrams and educational facts to make it look like a teacher's drawing or notes. I loved that each part of the museum was in it's own room. It made for a quieter and sometimes secluded experience. At Gateway it is always so loud and there is so much to take in at once but here it was less chaotic. The exhibits were great! I was really, really impressed. It was also a lot less crowded than Gateway, which is saying a lot considering it was a holiday. It was a fun day and we're so glad we went!

using a conveyor belt to get grain up to the silo

coen picked fresh produce from the garden

he was still waking up from his nap on the way here

loved his basket!

grocery shopping with a kid-size cart

every 1 1/2 year old's dream - a room full of balls to throw!

trying to figure out where to start the ball from to make it through the loop

letting coen try but all he wanted to do was throw!

we experimented by letting the ball start from different heights to see what would happen

watching the ball go over each hill..will it make it to the end?

so cute up on tip-toes

the boys built a long chain of magnetic gears

marshall all geared up - hahaha!

the museum had all different sizes of pvc pipe available to create your own space shuttle

all dressed up and ready for take off

laboring over a patient, while dad just labors...

for a beautiful 9 oz, plastic, breech, african-american baby!

"can I get some help in here? the last time I was in L&D it didn't turn out so great... sorry about that, mom."

apparently these are "new mother" facial expressions...

congratulations, honey. does this mean you can lactate, too?

dr. marshall put the skeleton puzzle together all by himself

they had a great selection of water toys

checking out the snake and learning to say "hisssss"

marshall tried his hand at some real-life plumbing

these pvc pipes were awesome to build with!

loved playing with his favorite - fishies!

playing inside the lego submarines was a huge hit

coen loved feeding the handkerchiefs to the tubes and watching them blow out

pretending he is a deep sea diver