I am Woman....

...and I want Chocolate! Mmmmmmm

Chocolate Ricotta Icebox Cake

Sweet and Salty Cake

Chocolate Meringue Cake

Peanut Butter Whoppie Pies

Don't these look delish?! Pretty sure they do.

The only problem is, that by the time I make sure I have all the ingredients,

 go to the store to get the missing ones,

then make one of these yummy looking chocolate wonders...

I no longer want to eat it.

Instead I want this....

Nachos Supremo

One, Two, Three's and a Shopping Cart

Here are a few picture I took of James counting to 3

He jumped on every 3, but my camera was too slow to catch it so

I have little fits of laughter everytime I look at these...

...James does not like to sit in any high chair, booster, or grocery cart

when I do put him in one, a grocery cart this instance

he waits for me to stop the cart, stands up and jumps on me

and because I dont want him to smash his head on the floor

I catch him

he then wiggles his way to the ground

well tonight we tried something new

letting him push the cart

Success!!

Oh Boy...

"He's pretty wild isn't he?"
is what a family Matt home-taught tonight asked.
Yes...
Yes he is.
James' favorite activities include:

• Counting 1, 2, 3 then running as fast as he can across the room only to do it again going the opposite direction when he runs out of room.
• Jumping off the couch, also counting 1,2,3
• Throwing his food on the floor when he's full
• Opening the dishwasher and "unloading" it
• Pulling all our shoes out of the closet, then throwing said shoes down the stairs
• Climbing on the computer desk, opening programs I didn't even know we had, and freezing the computer using only the keyboard
• Pulling out all the contents of the bookshelf
• Standing by the front door saying "bye, bye, bye, bye, bye" and waving his tiny little hands
• When outside, he loves to run into the parking lot, hijack the neighbor children's toys, and try to pet the horses behind the covered parking
• Being an escape artist at any store,  giggling as if there weren't anything better than running away from Mommy and Daddy

Yes I have a wild child and every day is a new adventure with him.
It's amazing how fast he's growing up.
I wish I could just keep him this size forever.

James and Daddy

James in his new favorite spot

On a lighter note...

James can count "two, twee, fo!"

Matt has an intership/job as a Graduate Assistant and will be working to put together "E Week", here's an article about last year's E Week to get a better understanding. Matt will be in charge of finding sponsors and recruiting participants for the "Elevator Pitch" competition, as well as other things. We're pretty excited about this opportunity for him!

I won a sweet Ustate hat at the coaches show last thursday, YAY Me! lol

Saturday was the 1st home football game for Utah State. We played the ISU Bengals. Matt's parents and his brother Mike and his 3 boys came. Had a great time!

Here's us pre-game, we try to get there an hour before to get a good seat. The student section was completely full, so we ended up moving 3 times so the little guys could see.

All in all, a good day, and a great weekend.

What's on my mind

I never considered myself to be racist. I've never looked at someones race, or religion and thought,
"Oh because they look or believe a certain way, they must be >fill in the blank<." So to me, when people have a problem with people that are different from them, I just have to shake my head because I just don't understand it.
 I often get the question "Where would you like to end up?" Often times my answer is California, which is usually followed by ...

" Oh I would never want to raise my kids there because..."

A: There's too many Mexicans

B:There aren't very many members of the church

C: California is too liberal

D: the crime rate is too high

or

E: It's so expensive

I would consider 2 out of those 5 answers legitimate. I don't want to raise my kids where they would be too sheltered. I want them to have friends that aren't all blonde haired and blue eyed. I want them to have friends that are of all religions, and have a respect for that. I DO NOT want my children to fear people that are different from them.

 As Yoda would say

 “Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.”

Now, I don't have to end up in California. San Diego is just my ideal location laugh out loud.

In reality we'll end up wherever Matt gets a good job, and I'm just fine with that.

I was emailing my little brother who is on a mission speaking mandarin in New York, and he told me something that made me just want to fly out there and give him the biggest hug in the world.

 He wrote,

"Later that evening we ran into a guy who was captured by the Taliban for7 months because he protected an American - he was a new york times reporter. Tahir Ruddin or something. He thought our church was great because we had polygamy - he has two wives. I love meeting Muslims. We both realize we're not trying to convert each other so it's easy to just have a friendly conversations like civilized people."

(To read my brother's emails home, check out the blog i set up for him, http://elderbenjamineddynynys.blogspot.com/)

Ben's comment came at a time when I'd been hearing a lot of complete crap about Muslims with the whole mosque ordeal and the anniversary of 9/11. Even today an article on my home page was about

Muslims face growing bias in the workplace. So, when I wrote back to Ben I told him of all this, and how I was so glad that he had a good view of Muslims. This week when he wrote back to me, he included an article from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints' website " A Latter-Day Saint Perspective on Muhammad"  I encourage all of you to read this. I thought it was a great article and really enjoyed it.

"Elder Russell M. Nelson quoted a public statement issued by the First Presidency and the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles in October 1992, calling upon “all people everywhere to re-commit themselves to the time-honored ideals of tolerance and mutual respect. We sincerely believe that as we acknowledge one another with consideration and compassion we will discover that we can all peacefully coexist despite our deepest differences.” He then added: “That pronouncement is a contemporary confirmation of the Prophet Joseph’s earlier entreaty for tolerance. Unitedly we may respond. Together we may stand, intolerant of transgression but tolerant of neighbors with differences they hold sacred. Our brothers and sisters throughout the world are all children of God.”"

With that, I've said what I need to say. I'll try to blog about something a little lighter next time :)

What do I think about the Mosque in NYC?

"We claim the privilege of worshiping Almighty God according to the dictates of our own conscience, and allow all men that same privilege, let them worship how, WHERE, or what they may."

The 11th Article of Faith of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints

Another Visit To Idaho Falls

We decided to head up to Idaho Falls again for our last hurrah before Matt starts the MBA program. Which by the way, I have to brag about my husband graduating from Utah State University with a BA in History, Summa Cum Laude! YAY MATT! :D

.....anyway....

To prepare to leave we washed the car, only so it could get covered with bug juice all over again.

The boys enjoyed washing the car though, and I enjoyed seeing it sparkle for a day.

(We've had a lot of dirty rains this summer)

At one point, James went inside, grabbed his toy cars and put them in the soapy water.

So cute! Why I didn't take a picture I'll never know.

Idaho was spent visiting family, and celebrating our 4th anniversary. We kept it simple being poor college student-and-family, went to Jonny Carinos fun lunch -yum!- and saw Dinner for Smucks after.

I laughed pretty hard. Of course that was the same day BYU announced it would be going independent, leading the MWC to invited San Jose and Nevada, screwing over the WAC. Needless to say us Aggies were pretty depressed. Crossing our fingers we'll still have football in two years.

Friday I went to lunch with one of my best friends Melissa. We hadn't seen each other in three years but it was like it had only been a day :) Her son Trey is only 2 months older than James, and What a Cutie! Our boys could be cousin's they look so similar.

After lunch we took James and Trey to the Tauphaus Park Zoo. 

Getting 1-year-olds to look at the camera when there are goats and puddles around is pretty much impossible.

I should have had someone take a picture of all of us, but spaced it. So here's a picture of the ugliest pig I've ever seen.

 LOL pretty gross huh?

Thanks Melissa! It was great to see you!

That night Matt walked across the street from his parents house to Dairy Queen with James, when we got back  this is what we saw.

While walking back Matt noticed his spoon was missing, then he saw it come down, scoop up some ice cream, and dissapear again. Apparently James is smarter than we thought!

Well that's all I've got. We've got a busy week preparing for Matt to start school again, ward activities and a 12 hour work day for me on saturday.