Birthday Girl

Holy cow...I can't believe she's 3!!! We had a birthday bash on Saturday. She told me she wanted all of her family to come to her house. And that's just what we did. It was a blast! We crammed about 16 people in our little place and partied all night long!
Here's what she did when I asked her how old she was Saturday morning. She was excited.

Here's her Red Velvet heart cake that she requested. We did a heart theme. Heart/red decorations everywhere. Thank goodness Valentines stuff gets put on the store shelves early!!
The cake was almost more fun to make and decorate than it was to eat! Almost.


Opening gifts! We kept it pretty simple since her birthday is so close to Christmas, and she got reeeealy spoiled for Christmas.
I don't know what she was doing when I took this pic, but it made me laugh. She must have her tongue sticking in her bottom lip or something. Oh, and she waned nothing to do with me when it came time to open gifts. She wanted Aunt Ashley to help her! She sure loves her!
Her new Dora cell phone...it has not left her sight since being opened.

Her cousins helping her open gifts. They were just as excited as she was! This was one of the cute old navy dresses I got on Super Sale!!



Took 2 tries, but she blew them all out!
I sure love my birthday girl!! So proud of you Makayla! Thanks for being such a sweet little girl! And a great big sister!

THE END!!

WHAT!?

This cute little chunker will be 3 this Saturday. I seriously can't believe it. She's getting so grown up. The time has definitely flown by. (And it's freaking me out how much her little sister looks like this picture!)


Makayla at 6 months...

and at a little over a year I think...maybe 18 months?

And a week ago. Sheesh!
We are going to PARTY! I am excited/sad/freaking out. Excited to party, sad she is growing up so dang fast, and freaking out...just because. I really don't even know why. But I am. Ha!
Party pics coming soon!

A Day of Fun

This crummy air in the valley has been driving me insane! It almost makes me feel claustrophobic. So I figured, let's get out of the valley for a day and head to SLC. Thinking the air might be slightly better if we got out of the valley. (Which, by the way, it was NOT).
So we headed to Ogden, where Jason had to pick up some fire supply stuff, and well, that wasn't much fun. We were in this Fire supply place for almost an hour, while he tried on pants, had the lady mark where to hem them up, cause they were SUPER long. Then he had to pick out boots, and belts, etc... While we were doing this, Makayla managed to find the little box in the corner filled with old junky McDonald's happy meal toys (so gross). So she was keeping herself entertained. She had found a "Mrs. Potts" from Beauty and the Beast and was having a tea party. She even said a blessing on the food...very loudly, and multiple times, cause she had to get it "just right." Everyone in the place got a good laugh at that. Mind you, the place is filled with big manly Firemen, EMT's, cops, etc. They were all snickering. But how could you not, cause it was super cute.
So after that great adventure, we headed down to SLC to pick aunt Ash up and go down to the Living Planet Aquarium. We had never been before and thought it would be fun to go check it out.

We were petting these...they realllly creeped me out. Especially when you could feel their sides.


After getting my sleeve completely soaked...it was a lot deeper than I expected.

The Jellies...someday I want a big tank full of these with calm relaxing music playing. It was so mesmerizing watching them float around. Beautiful.
My cute girl, who is now completely potty trained!! Woohoo!! She basically did it all by herself too, hooray! I was nervous about it...but she is awesome. I'm so proud!

We actually had a really good time. Makayla wanted nothing to do with me and Jason, she only wanted aunt Ashley to hold her. Every time I would go to hold her hand or pick her up, she'd push me away and say, "Where's Ash? I want her to hold me!"

I don't know that the aquarium was quite worth the trip down just for that, it was pretty small, and SUPER crowded...note to self, never go on a Saturday ever again...
I think it would be more worth the $9 each if we had no crowds and could take our time and slowly wander through and see everything. We couldn't even see the penguins, there were about 100 people packed into that little area. No joke. It was a little too close quarters for us, so we bailed. I don't think we were in there for longer than maybe 40 mins max. Jason doesn't handle crowds well, and really, I don't either.
But at least Makayla was still under 3 and got in free!! That won't be the case next time.. :(
Speaking of which, we are having her birthday party on the 29th in 2 weeks! Hooray for when birthdays fall on Saturdays! She has requested a --heart-- cake, THANK GOODNESS!! With all the princesses and fairies and things she is into right now, I was just relieved that she didn't request a Cinderella cake or something. Hearts I can DO! Plus, all the stores have TONS of heart stuff out right now, lots of red and fun heart decor...thank you Valentines day! Making it easy on me, at least this year!

Some thoughts

Ok. So I'm not a huge fan of making New Years resolutions. Which is why I never do. I just try to be a better person/wife/mom in general than I was the previous year....
I have been reading a another blog lately, a friend of a friend, who's blog I absolutely love. Her name is Sheena. You will love her blog. It's hilarious, inspiring, and dang, can that girl take some awesome photos! Anyway...back to my thoughts.
So she has been blogging about making healthier eating choices/habits. And about her gradual change, and giving ideas on how to slowly make the change for yourself and your family.
I have been in the last year making some of these changes for our family too (which has also helped me slim down a tad... :)

Of course, we still have some days when we have no groceries, and nothing in the pantry, and do NOT want to venture to the store...thus, we usually end up eating pizza or some type of "fast" food. Costa Vida, Olive Garden, whatever. But we try not to let those days come very often, and not let them slip us up. I've slowly gotten Jason to a point where he really quite enjoys veggies!! And *gasp* even will eat a large salad for dinner! Although, he does like them more with some type of meat in there...I usually throw in some chicken or ham in them for him! He told me a few years back that before he met me, he hardly ever ate "green" things like zucchini, or squash, or garden veggies...but he loves to raid my parents garden now every summer! Yay!!

Anyway, I'm getting blabby...so long story short, I am going to try even harder this year to eat healthier, and cut out fast food a little bit more than last year. But not altogether...I don't know how long I could go without my sweet pork salad from Costa Vida...

So to go along with this post, I am sharing a recipe I got from my Aunt Joni :). Now, after sharing this, I might have to kill you. Seriously. I've held this recipe back for a long tome, but....just for the whole maybe 5 people that read this blog...I guess I'll share. It is by far my favorite recipe these days, and I'm pretty sure it will become yours too. It's the most simple, easy, and fast chicken enchilada recipe I've ever made.

Chili-Lime Chicken enchiladas:
1 Rotisserie chicken. (shredded)
1 T chili pwd.
1/4 cup lime juice
1/3 cup honey
1/2 tsp. garlic pwd.

Mix above ingredients and chicken together in a large bowl and let sit for 15 mins.

Then in a 9x9 or 9x13 pan, pour half of a 10 oz can of green enchilada sauce on the bottom of the pan. Roll chicken mix into flour tortillas (white or wheat), and lay in pan, seam side down. Pour remaining enchilada sauce over the top and sprinkle with cheese.
Bake at 350 for 20 mins.

We top ours with lettuce, tomatoes, sour cream, guac, and salsa....whatever we're feeling.
It will rock your world. I'm not kidding!

Now...make these tonight! DO IT!
And then comment and tell me how much you LOVED it!!!

Fantabulous New Year!

For New Years this year, we went down to St. George to visit my uncle Bryon and his family who recently moved there. Little did we know, we would drive through a blizzard most of the way down. By the time we hit it, we were far enough away that we didn't want to turn back, so we kept on going....ugh. Worst drive EVER!! his pic doesn't do it justice. It was even worse than this at times. But we made it...eventually.
Once we got there, Makayla was playing non-stop with her cousins. I was lucky to get this shot of her running by me chasing Emma.


And of course, when the Geddes family gets together, there has to be a puzzle...or 5 that gets done.


How freaking cute are we!? I love us...

We had some fun hitting golf balls in the back yard up into the cliffs. Yes, that's their view in their back yard. I should have taken a pic of the view out their front yard!! It's amazing.

The end...cause I'm tired and can't concentrate!!

Christmas fun

Well, the pictures are not in any real order here,...so I'll just explain a few, shall I? Here we go!
Started out the holidays with a nice warm loaf of banana bread, one of my faves! It turned out awesome, except for the fact that the entire bottom of the loaf stuck to the pan....woops, not enough greasing I guess. But it still tasted awesome.




This is the necklace that Jason got for me. Hard to see it really well in this pic, but it has 2 little circles that have mine and jason's initials on it, and then two long rectangles with the girls names, and then a pearl in the middle. I LOVE it!!


Haylee and Makayla playing with Grandma's new marble game!


Makayla enjoying the gift opening, I loved her reaction to everything. A different reaction to each and every little thing. SO cute! This was her poodle purse from Grandma.


The grandkids with great grandma.


Makayla lounging in her new blanky. She now totes this thing around everywhere with her. Her "very own" blanky.







The carnage...


before all the carnage...haha.


ok, so this was our Christmas Eve activities at my parents house. We played Minute to Win it games. My family is special...haha. I love them.


Greg trying to knock the cups over.


This one was the funniest one. We were all laughing SO hard at everyone's "shaking it" skillzzz.


I love this one, he had, in my opinion, the best moves...trying to get the ping pong balls out of the tissue box behind him.



Dang sideways video. Jason will kill me when he finds out I put this online...so enjoy it before he makes me take it off!! It's awesome!