the difference between boys and girls.

Oh you may think this will be a long and detailed entry disparaging boys for being different than us girls, but no....really it's just me saying how jealous I am of them.

ok, ready? here's the difference:

"boys are ready for the day once they're done showering."

that's it.

Oh sure, some of the more aware ones may take a minute to put some gel in their hair but really that's it.  and if, heaven forbid, being rushed caused them to miss any steps after their shower, well...they'd still be pretty much ready to go.

Girls on the other hand....the shower is our first step, the foundation if you will.  No other steps can really be done until this first and crucial step, but it is only the FIRST step of MANY steps.  Though we are technically clean, the shower is something we merely have to get out of the way so that we can start getting ready for our day.  Because if you do the other steps without the foundation of a shower you feel kinda gross throughout the day.  Especially if you have curly hair and need to scrunch it-then a shower is imperative.

Why should any of this matter?  As a mom, we have to figure out how to do the above while we have kids screaming in the next room- news flash: we dont' get to do the above.  On a good day I'm able to shower, throw my hair up in a messy wet bun thing and throw on the closest thing in the closet (0 thought).  Now while most guys see no problem with this, we girls have a hard time feeling nice unless we put effort into ourselves-and just managing to take a shower doesn't cut it.  We feel good when we actually take the time to do our hair, put on make up, and actually get to stand in the closet for more than 1 minute picking out an outfit.

moral of the story:
i'm clean, but most days I don't feel very pretty.

(I actually look forward to sundays for the mere fact that I can "do" my hair and while I feel lil pangs of guilt while code is left to keep jake happy when i'm sure he wants a relaxing sunday morning-i push those aside cause I like feeling pretty at least one day out of the week ;)

Happy Halloween!

So this week has been pretty fun so far.  Monday we went and voted!  It was very exciting for me-the first time in person since before it was always absentee ballots in college or I was out of the country serving a mission.  I didn't get a sticker though :( oh well.  It was cool to see a bunch of parents with their kids-showing them how important it is etc.  Tuesday we're going to go over to my parents for an election party and to watch the electoral votes come in :)  (I hope it ends well)

Jake had his first halloween!  Sadly the weather turned warm here again and while it was a nice night to be out-it was still too warm to wear his batman costume so we settled for an I love my mummy shirt :)
It seems to be impossible to find a pic where we're both looking cute so I'll be a true mom and make the sacrifice and use the ones where he's smiling/looking happy and cute.

We of course had our traditional halloween fare which might make sense if we ever live in a place that gets below 50...chili with fritos (I can't believe code had never eaten chili with fritos before! it was the only way to get me to eat chili as a kid), ghost rolls, and root beer.  Don't ask me why but you always have root beer on halloween-shrug and if I put more effort into it I would have bought dry ice for it.

After dinner we went over to fairfield and walked around the neighborhoods watching all the kids trick or treating.  It was interesting...maybe this is a texas only thing? or a houston only thing?  or I'm just way out of touch with halloween...but I'd say with 50% of the houses, the people sat out on lawn chairs in their driveways or in the cul-de-sacs with their candy and waited for the kids to just walk up to them....no door bell.....or anything.  It also seemed to be the rule of thumb that these adults who sat out like that had a glass of wine/beer etc, and by the end of the night around 8ish they were already pretty drunk....cause that's what i want my kids to see as they go trick or treating....

I mean we were walking by one house and some grandma who we learned a lil later was kinda tipsy, called out and said something about jake and so we were all: you wanna see him? so we rolled up their driveway and chatted for a few minutes-way nice, but kinda drunk.  I mean, she kept saying how cody and whitney were such great names........ok?.......

anywho, i may be old fashioned but you make the kids come ring the doorbell and say trick or treat, but that's just me, and if you're gonna drink and be all adult then have someone else hand out the candy.  It was fun though.

We got home and watched the best halloween movie of all time- hocus pocus.  Man I love that movie-code and I basically spent the whole movie anticipating the great lines and saying, "oo I love this next part!"

all and all it was a great halloween and we can't wait for next year when jake will be even bigger and we can kinda justify using him to get candy...the drunk grandma gave us a bag of peanut m&ms and a milky way and that's all we had-lightest halloween treat wise ever for me....I must be growing up....or too lazy to go buy candy for myself :)

whoops...

so as it turns out we found out why a bunch of strangers were knocking on our door at midnight.  Apparently a car exploded......yes.....exploded.......in the parking lot to the side of our building and took out the cars parked next to it.  So some neighbors took it upon themselves to knock on every door to find out who's car it was.  Can you believe it??? EXPLODED.  Like their charred frames are still sitting out there taped off.  Apparently it was some electrical fire.  Now everyone's afraid to park next to an old car haha.

It's go time...

I have had some interesting experiences with "strangers" lately.  So last night Code and I were woken up by someone pounding on our door.  I mean, we're talking-the kind of pounding that you'd expect from a policeman who yells "open up!" etc.  It was 12:30.  So Code goes and looks out the peep hole and it was really loud out in our stairwell etc.  There were just a few people out there standing on our doorstep-a girl and a guy.  He didn't really hear what they were saying but heard them say something about "white people".  Now, whether they were talking about us or whether they were talking in general as they were waiting who knows.  Now, they didn't look intimidating or scary/aggressive (other than there loud knock) so I wasn't really scared-more mad than scared, but we didn't open up.  Come on, it's 12:30-we're not opening up unless they are police with a warrant haha.

Anywho, but I wasn't as nervous cause we heard other people knocking on other peoples' doors around us too-NO idea what they were after but again, no way we were opening up.  They pounded on our door a few times before giving up-I was livid.  Luckily Jake didn't even stir (his room is right off the front door-ours is in the back of the apartment and it woke us up!)  But really Jake was the only thing saving them from getting yelled at cause I didn't want to risk waking him up.

Not to be racist but I think code and I are the only white people in our building.  I'm not just talking african americans, but hispanics, middle eastern etc.  Which is fine-I don't care, but I have to say....our building is very...loud sometimes.  Just ask friends of ours who have stayed the night.  Whether it's parties going on out behind our building at all hours of the night on random weeknights (I know!), or loud yelling/laughing in our stairwells/ people pounding up and down the stairs- seriously we had some teens get into a fight in our stairwell and adults had to come out and yell at them etc.  and all of this happens at exactly the wrong time-like during jake's naps or in the middle of the night.  I get really frustrated with our building.

And I swear, there are moving vans out in front of our building at least once a month from people moving in and out so frequently-whether they're evicted cause they can't make the rent, or what, I don't know, but there's little point in getting to know our neighbors cause in a month we'll have a new neighbor anyway.

 But I felt like Cameron from Modern Family-"it's go time"  It made me think how it's not always a terrible idea to have protection in your house (in the way of a firearm), and yet I would never be able to feel completely at ease if I knew there was a gun in my house...but I def understand why people have them.

Sigh...it just bugs me...I've had to call the office like some old crochety grandma complaining about the middle school kids running up and down our stairwells yelling for 30 min to an hour every day when they get home from school and how it wakes up Jake etc.  Not that they can enforce anything cause I don't know what apartment they live in, but still....the loud random bongo drums from downstairs I can deal with, but they need to recognize that the actual stairwell is communal property and respect our peace and quiet.

Anywho,
on a lighter and happier subject I was walking in the park today and this kind old grandpa asked if the grey car was mine as we were both walking back towards the parking lot.  I said yes, and waited for him to lecture me about parking straight or inform me that it was scratched etc, but he then proceeded to say: I have a 2011 Genesis-aren't they great?  and we just gushed over our cars for a good five minutes haha.  It made me feel so good that he complimented our taste and recognized our car for starters haha.  Not many people have heard of the Genesis-I hadn't until Code turned me on to them.

Can't wait to move into a house one day.

2012 Copperfield Ward Halloween Party!

I had my suspicions, and I was right- having a kid makes halloween a whole lot funner-even if that kid is 3 months old :)
So Jake wasn't so sure about this "costume" thing at first...

but he eventually got into it once we got there...

he does this cute thing lately where when he bursts into a big smile he turns his head away like he's being bashful-it's so cute I can't stand it!

So our game was the haunted pumpkin patch.  We spent all weekend (thanks code) blowing up white and orange balloons and drawing ghost or jack-o-lantern faces on them.  Though it was a ton of prep work, it was super easy game to manage over-unlike the other games, we didn't have to reset anything or make kids go one at a time.  The kids would try to wait in line at our room like the others but we were all: go crazy, you don't have to wait your turns-go pop a balloon and come get a treat.  It was so funny tho, kids would ask: "how?"   You're asking me HOW TO POP A BALLOON??? what kind of childhood are you having?! um....stomp on it, sit on it, lay on it, use your nails-go crazy kids!  haha

I def think our game was the scariest game of the bunch-some of the lil ones just wanted to play in the balloons rather than pop them and it was funny to watch the adults walk by holding their ears and wincing in anticipation.  One balloon popped so loud everyone walking up and down the hall jumped/and ducked.  You'd think there was a drive-by haha.  

By the end we told the boys who kept coming back for more to just go crazy and pop the rest-it took .5 secs, and then I told the kids to take the rest of the candy holding out the bag-yeah...it was like a feeding frenzy :)

Needless to say Jake didn't like being by our loud game too much so he made some new friends with Sherry Bogdan and Allison Wischmeier who kept him safe from the loud pops

There were some pretty cute costume ideas that I'll have to keep for the future:

I especially liked the themed family ideas like the Loudins-their three kids came as fruit.  I didn't manage a picture of their littlest one but she was a strawberry :)

Julie Woodall had the cutest skeleton shirt on that also showed her soon to be baby girl :)

There were tons of games as well-seriously, if I were a kid I'd have gone crazy with it all.  Along with the hot dog dinner in the cultural hall there was the pick the nose game- some of the girls seemed to shy away from this one but the boys were not shy...

Then in the classrooms around the building there was:

glow-n-the dark tic tac toe

this really cool life-size version of operation (I had a better pic of it but it won't sync for some reason):

There was also a bean bag game, fishing for treats game, and a cupcake walk but I didn't get good pics of those, and some amazing face painting:

By the end of the night allison brought jake back and he was completely passed out haha.  It's so funny but I totally think he is an introvert like code and me.  I guess it could just be cause he's 3 months old, but really he shuts down around tons of people and excitement.  Even when my visiting teachers and their kids come over and he just sits in my lap and watches the kids play he gets wiped out.  Some kids just feed off the excitement and eat it up but not him.

Yes, our picture taking was probably overkill but what do you want? It was Jake's first halloween haha

                                                                                                  I LOVE this pic hahahaha, Jake is SO not enjoying himself and I so obviously am (he had just woken up):

Then we all moved outside for the trunk or treating.  I'm pretty sure Jake's costume was meant for places that actually get cold for halloween (understandably) so he seemed to perk up a little once we went out into the cold air, but he was still tired and obviously over the whole experience.  He just kept leaning into Cody as if to say: protect me from all the craziness!

he's so cute it kills me!

Happy Halloween Jake-you are the cutest batman EVER (and that's really saying something in looking at past batmans).  Thank you to the Jeppsens for the awesome costume!

Memory Lane

So this morning as I'm reading friends' blogs filled with fun fall festivities and the weather changing etc...it's made me start thinking about my favorite memories with fall....and they all seem to be in Utah-what's up with that?  oh yeah, because they actually have a fall :)

I loved fall in Oklahoma too-very pretty there as well and remember the days of trick or treating when your parents would make you wear a coat over your costume....really?  In the words of Jerry Seinfeld: "I don't recall Superman wearing a jacket..."  Except I got smart and realized that if I hid my jacket in a place that my mom would never look (behind the nice couch in the living/piano room where we kids basically weren't allowed) then I could go out without a coat.  I know....sneaky...very sneaky.

Some of the things that I miss from my Utah falls:

the corn maze at thanksgiving point of course!  The last one I remember was the one of napolean dynamite.  This was a very significant date for code and me before we were seriously dating.  Apparently I was playing hard to get a little too hard and not sending enough positive signals so this date was his last attempt.  We held hands as we squeezed through this gross inflatable monster thing-aww yes, true love.  But what really did it was I asked him out on this group murder mystery date letting him know that yes, I did indeed like him.   A year later we'd be having our wedding luncheon at thanksgiving point...

Though I went here all the time, I somehow associate it with fall....but the Springville Museum of Art. This was one of the best dates that Code took me on-I had never been there before and he knew I liked art/humanities and stuff.  Really, it was that date that got me looking into doing an internship there.  Plus, I don't know if people there realize how amazing it is to have such a quality museum for FREE.  Man, if I lived there I'd be taking day trips over there all the time with Jake.  For that matter I also love BYU's MOA-also amazing and FREE.  Man...I miss that...

Of course I have to give a shout out to BYU Football-there's nothing quite like being in a stadium with 1,000s of other people all cheering for the same team.  It's pretty much the essence of college.

Oh and I miss all the great hiking that there is around there-sooo pretty and interesting!  I miss our hikes. I mean, don't get me wrong, code and I go for walks here but it's not the same as getting out and spending a saturday hiking and talking and seeing all the beautiful nature.

Alright I need to stop before I get annoyed that I'm in a place where the temp is still in the 70s and it's too hot to get out and go for walks/do fun stuff during the day. 

Needless to say I am so excited for our roadtrip to Utah thanksgiving week!  I'm going to show Jake around campus and we already have a long list of restaurants we have to eat at (zuppa's, cafe rio, in-n-out, crown burger, and that yummy chocolate place in orem with the HUGE cookie pans?)

whoa...is it the end of the world? cause this is my 2nd post today...

So some quick cute pics I shot of jake in his bumbo today-he is doing better and better at it, and i found a way to distract jake from getting upset at tummy time....the tv....now i'm torn.....get my child addicted to tv....or not help him progress to crawling quicker....oh well, I won't let him do it for very long...

even though this one is blurry I love it haha.

So I remember some friends asking about this awesome craft that I did at our ward's enrichment activity:

Though I don't have the exact dimensions of the blocks and am too lazy to measure them out myself, I'll explain real quick how we did it.  

First step paint a light layer of cream colored paint on the best side of the blocks and let it dry.

        Then we took them outside and power-sanded the edges of the blocks so the front surface of the blocks was raised compared to the edges of the block if you get my drift...

        Then we stained the blocks-wipe it on making sure to put it on the front/painted side last and then wipe it off starting with the painted side first.  easy.

        Then you need to pick out basic scrapbook paper that you like and cut them into squares slightly smaller than the dimensions of the blocks.

         You'll need to get vinyl lettering in a chocolate brown color.

         First you put the vinyl lettering and put them onto the papers before you put those on the blocks

         Then you take the pieces of paper and distress the edges with an ink pad

         Then you will modge-podge (no idea how to spell that) the pieces of scrapbook paper onto the blocks with glue.  (I didn't know what that meant at the time, but incase you don't either- you lightly brush glue onto the blocks, place the paper on the blocks and rub it good to make sure it doesn't bubble-you really don't need a lot of glue or it will bubble), then once that is dry you brush a light layer of glue over the surface of the papers.

and there you go.  It was pretty easy-and if I could do it, then anyone can :)