An Awesome Weekend

This last weekend was so much fun! The weather was perfect, we had lots of time together, and life is just good!

Thursday night we attended a choir concert at Marshall High School. Caleb LOVED it! He was dancing and just really enjoyed the music and the company. It was so cute when he recognized people on stage from church and would point excitedly!

Judy hosted a baby shower for Rachel on Friday night. Rachel is truly one of my favorite people ever and it was so much fun to celebrate the coming baby! We had a great time! We are so unbelievably excited for Jed and Rachel to have their baby! We can't wait!!!


Caleb and Chris had some good quality time together that night too!

Saturday we had a picnic at the park. Chris hadn't been to the park since they had redone it and was way impressed! And of course, with all this fun equipment--


--Caleb's favorite part was still playing in the dirt!



The other reason this park is so much fun for Caleb is that these airplanes fly by every few minutes. He has to stop whatever he's doing and point and squeal when they fly by:

Once again, so much fun!! We were even privileged to have Aubrey come with is! Thanks for coming! You are too much fun!!

Saturday, we also went and picked out a pumpkin. Caleb was all excited! He has a plastic pumpkin he's been taking with him everywhere for the last couple weeks. So he was excited to have a real one and to help pick it out.

Saturday night, Jed and Rachel had us over for some pumpkin carving fun. They also had these cool glow sticks that Caleb is STILL enjoying! Caleb loves Jed and Rachel and Lexi so much! It is so cute! He also loved all the pumpkins--he was very excited and squealing when they were all lit up. Thanks for all the fun, guys!





Sunday we got to celebrate the birthday of one of our other favorite people--Bretta! We had SO much fun with you guys! Thanks again, for letting us celebrate with you and always making us feel like family!

We are looking forward to lots more fun this week with coming Halloween festivities. Here is a preview of Caleb's costume:

No More Monkeys!

As of last night, we have a new rule at our house. No more monkeys jumping on the bed! Yesterday, I had two monkeys jumping on my bed and then I heard some strange loud crunching noises. No, no bones were broken. But the box spring was broken in several places! Apparently all those parents out there are right! I didn't think you could really break a bed by jumping on it, but apparently you can! Our bed ended up being one very expensive toy! Luckily we had another queen sized bed in one of the extra bedrooms that we use for guests and we were able to swap out the box springs temporarily.

Here is a picture I took of some of their moves:


Pretty talented, huh? Quite the moves.

Now you might think I am referring to two kids like Caleb-sized that don't know any better than to jump on a bed. But here are the guilty monkeys. :)



Yes, that's right. Chris was showing Caleb how to use our bed as a full on trampoline.

We've been wanting to get a king size bed for awhile now, but we just couldn't justify it because our bed was still in great shape. I accused Chris of breaking the bed purposefully to ensure that we get a new bed soon, but he denies it. So I guess, in all reality...it was a bit lucky. Because now we have an excuse to buy a new bed.

Bottom line...does anyone have a recommendation on a good place to buy a good bed?

Caleb Tricks

So a few weeks ago, a guy at church asked us if Caleb still does this funny trick that he used to do. Chris and I completely forgot that he had ever done it!! We were talking about how we need to get stuff like that on video so we don't forget about it. So a few weeks ago, we sat down and took a bunch of video. Here are some random parts of it:

(Do you like how he puts his Elmo chair on the couch and creates a "throne" for himself? And the "don't you wish you had these" thing is him trying to show his muscles! :) He takes after his Uncle Kody and Uncle Joe with that one.)


Caleb LOVES to sing and dance and do the actions to songs. Here are a few of his favorite songs that he loves to do the actions to:



Here Caleb is showing some of the body parts he knows:


I know I've said it before lots of times, but this has to be the cutest age. Then again, I've thought that over and over and over again for 20 months. I'm not sure how it works exactly, but it just keeps getting cuter and more fun. At some point will I stop thinking that?

The Happy Couple

This weekend our friends Ben and Heather tied the knot. The wedding was a beautiful outdoor wedding. The weather was perfect. The food was delicious! The music and dancing were great! It was a ton of fun!!

Here is a picture of the happy couple!



We were lucky enough to host lots of Ben's family at our house for a few days. It was SO much fun to get to know them, and play some games, and eat lots of treats, and just chat!! Caleb LOVED all the kids and the adults and made lots of friends. He was sad to see them go today! Now the house is back to just boring old mom all day! :)

Here are pictures of some of Caleb's new friends:

Carson and Caleb

Carson, Caleb the Large and Caleb the Small


Caleb and Dan


Caleb, Adam, and Adam's dad Brad

Chris even got to be one of the groomsman. Funny story.... We had one of Ben's five-year old nephews sitting by us during the ceremony and he is quite the character. When Chris walked by with one of the bridesmaids, he said indignantly, "What is Chris doing walking with another woman?!?" I couldn't stop giggling as I tried to explain. He also said, as soon as the ceremony was over, "They're married now? So when are they going to have kids?" He is quite the character (one of many!) and kept us laughing.



Here are a few random pictures






Congrats to Ben and Heather! We are so happy and excited for you!

Nasty and Wrong. Very wrong.

Last night, Chris came upstairs at like midnight and asked for the camera. I asked him why he wanted it and he said, "I want to take a picture of something before I kill it." Uh oh! That does NOT sound good. I didn't even want to know. But I looked at the pictures this morning. Sick and wrong. Apparently, Chris opened the patio doors to go out onto the deck and walked right into something. He turned the light on and, WOW! That was one busy and fast little (term used loosely) critter. It's nasty business stretched from our house to the far end of the deck. I know it wasn't there just a couple days before when I was out there. Chris has assured me that this "friend" of ours has gone to spider heaven and won't be back to visit. Sorry (term also used loosely) to all those out there that feel he should have lived. Because all I can say is SICK AND WRONG!

Bittersweet

Well, it finally happened! Our ward was split and the new line is down Hamilton Wolf and Babcock. So we're in a different ward now. And yes, for those that have been asking...the rumors are true...Chris is in the new bishopric. I know he'll do a great job! And watch out if JoEllen has a dream about you, because apparently they come true!!! She had a dream a week or two ago that Chris would be in the bishopric and we thought she was pretty funny until yesterday!

We are sad to not be in the same ward with so many of our good friends, but we know that we'll still see everyone. We'll just have to put more effort into planning things. We're also very excited because several of our friends were not in our ward before, but are now.

I guess that's the way life is...you start to get comfortable and you might as well just start looking for changes coming down the pipeline!

(For those of you who do not understand the lingo above, the LDS church is divided into congregations called wards. So it is determined geographically which time/place/congregation you go to and yesterday the geographic lines were changed).

Girl's Night In

You know that thing they do at the circus where they fit like a billion clowns in one car? Yeah, we tried that at our house on Saturday night. :)

While the guys were at a meeting, the girls and our kids got together for some fun. The guys joined in the fun with us after the meeting.




We had lots of karaoke going on in one room. I am so impressed by the voices of some of these people!





And even Olivia took a shot at the karaoke!



Caleb had a great time dancing and singing to the karaoke! He has his own little stage on a raised part of our couch between two seats. Aubrey was trying to teach him how to kick up his legs for this song. But alas, Caleb likes his own form of dancing.






We had some board games in another room. I so wish I would have had my video camera out for this game. It was hilarious!



And some card games. With this game, the "idiot" or loser of the game is supposed to wear underwear on their head through the next round. For this night though, we tried a big sombrero instead. Landon apparently liked the sombrero because he lost several rounds in a row! :)





We had three gaming systems for video games in another room



And a small movie theater in another room. I brought in a big bowl of popcorn and several smaller bowls so everyone could have their own. Apparently Caleb went through after I left and dished up a small bowl for everyone and passed them out. Quite the little host, huh? :)



There were lots of kids toys in another couple rooms. And by the way, Chelsea, you seriously need to stop cleaning up my house! Magically all the toys were cleaned up at the end of the night.... I'm assuming it was Chelsea because she does it ALL THE TIME! THANK YOU , once again!! I'm going to have to start paying you and your kids for all your services!!!!



And of course lots of food.



We even had little Sadie Ray grace us with her first social appearance. She is just over 2 weeks old, I think! Too cute!



Here are a few more random pictures.

Matthew trying out the karaoke


Daniel all partied out!


Aubrey showing her fashionable t-shirt over a dress look. Her dress was VERY cute! She came from another party and decided to put a t-shirt over it once she got to our house.


The guys playing cards


Hannah with cute Eric


Clare checking out her next karaoke song selection


Some of the girls just hanging out and chatting


Thanks for coming everyone!

Ode to Aubrey

Aubrey is a Dial family favorite person. She has these, what I like to call, "Aubreyisms"...and they're awesome! Whenever someone is telling a story, she throws in her hilarious Aubreyism and it always cracks me up (Aubrey, I don't like the "H" word...ha ha ha)! She always makes me laugh so hard!!

So, the other day, I was watching Aubrey make these very cute mums. (For those of you not from Texas, a mum is like a big (3-5 foot long!) corsage for homecoming. Of course, the normal wrist or pin corsage will never do as everything in Texas has to be huge! You give them to all your friends, not just your date. And people wear a bunch of them all at once. If I'm not mistaken, the guys wear them with a band on their arms around their biceps and the girls wear them pinned to their shirts. It's a very interesting Texas phenomenon.) Here is a picture of one that I found online. Of course, Aubrey's were way cuter!


Anyway, Aubrey and Bretta were telling us how they went to the store to purchase the materials to make these mums and they were all sold out of some of the stuff. Aubrey wanted to add these little, decorative cowbells to her mums. These cowbells are apparently a popular item and only a few could be found. So when Aubrey was making her mums, she was talking about the lack of and hunt for the dangling decor. Hmmm...this reminds me of something.... The phrase, "I need more cowbell!" kept coming to mind.

When I went to bed that night, I couldn't stop thinking about and giggling about "more cowbell!" being needed. SNL has a funny skit about a band that needs "more cowbell." I'm glad Aubrey agrees with Christopher Walken on this point...check it out!

I got a fever! And the only prescription is MORE COWBELL!

Love ya, Aubrey! You're the best!

Broccoli Salad and Chocolate Chip Cookies

We had a fairly busy week last week. On Friday, among several other things, I tried hard to fit in time to make this big broccoli salad and some chocolate chip cookies. Chris was camping with the scouts that night. So I load up my salad, my cookies, and Caleb and head out. I drop Caleb off at our friends house (thanks again for watching him by the way!) As I'm double checking the address on the card, the date "September 21st" catches my eye. Yep! The potluck dinner was a week ago. Uh, oops. Nice. So I turned around and went back to pick up Caleb (who didn't really want to leave because he was having too much fun!) Cookies and salad, anyone?!?!

So that just about sums up my week. I can't tell you how many things I forgot to do. Like bring my keys with me before I shut my locked front door. You know, stuff like that. Minor details.

The worst part about it, is that I think it's contagious. Those I talk to and have been hanging around the last few days seem to have caught a slight case of it too. Beware!

And no...I'm not pregnant. I come by my forgetfulness naturally.

A Little Vain...

...ok, a lot vain.


But we tend to agree with Caleb.