Watts Family Pictures!

Cherry Mristmas!

My two boys with their only cousin.... Ryli! We love him sooooo much, and are greatful that he is visiting us for the holidays.
Uncle Landon just moved away today to Chicago, and we are really bummed out. I was talking to a family member the other day and they asked if I was excited to visit him and do some great shopping. I said, "No, duh, I am sure you have heard of the Chicago Cubs. We will be planning our visits around them."

Ah, Sunday dinners at the in-laws. I love that we live so close to family now, and I am looking forward to all of the great memories that we will share together. T-ball games, football games, family gatherings, holidays, game nights, more T-ball games... I love Cece in this picture. My friend Amy visited me a couple of weeks ago, and it was great to see her and her beautiful girls.

I know..

I know... I have not updated this blog in a little while and I am sorry for that. It has been so crazy at our house lately. I am still trying to get my boys back on a schedule, and this is what Brad and I wake up to most mornings... Dax and Shane between us. Shane now climbs out of his crib and wants to sleep in Daxon's bed, with Daxon. Then, they come into our bed some time in the middle of the night. Notice the binkie in Shane's mouth. AHHHH, It's back! I am desperate for sleep. Ugh! Oh well, at least they cuddle.

I love the snow, and I forgot how beautiful Utah is in the winter. I hope that I still feel that way in a few months from now when the snow is still here.
Daxon celebrated his fourth birthday on December 2nd. He is growing up so fast. He got the game Candyland from his friend Landon, and that was probably his favorite gift. We were playing it for the 50th time and in the middle of the game he told me that I was a "goofus". Oh, and the only thing that he wants for Christmas is a monster truck movie. I love it! He loves NASCAR, so for his birthday I got him a Jimmie Johnson racecar and the matching truck, well apparently got the wrong one. He said, "Mom, I don't like Jimmie Johnson, I like Jeff Gordon." I had no idea that he knew so much about race cars. Daxon is such a blessing in my life. I am never bored now that I have him. Every day is an adventure.

Daxon found his match. Conner. He is almost six, and is soooo cute. He is spunky, energetic, happy, and crazy just like Dax. I love him! They wrestle for hours and Daxon keeps up very well, even though Dax is about half his weight. I would like to get them both into a karate class together to help burn off some of that energy.

What we have been up to...

We have finally made our move, and are settled enough to finally post our happenings. I am exausted and my kids are still adjusting to a new house and the one hour time change. Ugh.

Daxon's last day of preschool... what a sad day. It was so sweet because his teacher Ms. Debra cried when I came to pick him up. It was really touching to see that someone else had genuine love for my child. I am really going to miss that preschool, Daxon needed that outlet so badly and he did really well there and learned some of his alphabet and how to write his name. Not bad.
Here is the moving diesel that we completly filled up. There is even two cars packed in there amongst our things.
And here is our house that just started being framed a couple of days ago. The framers say that they should be done framing by next Thursday.
Just a cute picture of Dax.

My parents

Here is my sister Caitlin. She didn't want her picture taken so I was trying to turn her head unsuccessfully. She is so much fun to spend time with. She can't wait to be a teenager, and I can't wait for her to be older to babysit more often. I love her.

I think that this picture is funny. If you know my dad, then you would know that he never smiles like this. He usually is strictly business. It is probably because he is at a football game. Aren't most guys happy at any kind or sporting event? My mom of course is sporting Cort's jacket. I was upset that Cort didn't ask me to wear his jersey, some "hot chick" (Dana) wears it at every game. I see who is more important...

Tagged...

Ok, so I have been tagged twice in the last couple of weeks and have just now had the time to do it. For those that I tag, it has nothing to do with favoritism, here are the rules:
A. The rules of the game are posted at the beginning. B. Each player lists 6 facts/habits about themselves. C. At the end of the post, the player then tags 6 people and posts their names, then goes to their blogs and leaves them a comment, letting them know that they have been tagged and asks them to read your blog.
Here goes nothing:

1. It really bothers me when people discriminate. Even more so when it has to do with being a Mormon. I have already lost a good friend due to me being a Mormon. We were friends for a year and then one day she said that she had researched my religion most of it anti-Mormon literature, and felt that she was disturbed by what she read. Hmmm... never mind researching real source, or asking a Mormon, or that what she came to understand was not correct! Here was her letter that you might find interesting:

Hi Chanel,

I have been meaning to write for so long now and finally I have sat down and actually remembered to do so. First, I want to apologize for not returning your two phone calls/messages. I wasn't really sure what to say I guess, so I never made the time to figure out what I should say. I am sorry.

The truth is that the whole LDS thing kind of threw me for a loop. I read a bit of The Book of Mormon, did a little research and read a book regarding the LDS religion and its history and it all was so crazy to me. Honestly, most of it didn't add up and a lot of what I came to find out was a bit disturbing. Anyway, I wasn't sure exactly how to approach you about it because you obviously are a completely sweet, loving person and I think of you in the highest regard. However, it became difficult for me to imagine having a friendship with someone who I know believes that because I do not accept anything that their religion believes, I will not end up in heaven.

The difficult part is that you are by far one of the sweetest, kindest people I have ever met. My kids love you and I enjoyed your company very much. I just have had a difficult time attempting to rectify the feelings I have regarding the impact of religion on our friendship.

I hope that this email finds you well and is not too unorganized for you to grasp some understanding of my feelings. It is often hard to articulate exact feelings in such a limited vernacular.

Love,
********

Did she seem to forget what century and country that she lives in? Last time I checked it was 2007. Are we not taught to love our fellow men regardless of race or religion? Just today, my friend Amy was told that she is not allowed to put her four year old in a certain Christian preschool because she is Mormon, and that it is against school policy to allow a Mormon in their school. Anyone want their number? Who would want to send their child to a preschool where they are taught to discriminate against other religions anyway. Whatever! I think that I am now just discriminating against discriminators...

2. I hate moving! I have moved pretty much every year since I was 13. Ugh! I am excited to get this next move over with and finally get settled. The packers are coming in three days, and we are out of here in five. Times are really stressful for me right now, it makes me anxious just typing about it. My mind is jumping from what needs to be organized, to finding a preschool in Utah, to what else can I give to DI, ect. AAAAH! One positive from moving... I have learned that no matter where you live, you can make it a home and learn to love it. Some places just take more time than others.

3. I dream of going to a fancy cooking school and becoming a pastry chef, just for fun.

4. Who do I admire the most? Brad- he is perfect in my eyes. Amy- she has quite the inner strength that I aspire to have. My mom and Grandma Condie- they are one in the same... both selfless and positive, and have a firm foundation.

5. Growing up, I thought that motherhood would be easier than it really is.

6. My husband offered to hire a cleaning lady to come to our house a couple times a month. I declined due to the fact that cleaning is a huge stress relief for me. Weird? I am.

Ok- so I am tagging Kesli, Ashley, Rebecca, Tara, both Lisa's!

Three on Two

Cortland... the reason that Daxon always wants to go to my parent's house. He adores his Uncle and tells me that he wants to play football like his "Uncle Corky". Cortland is so great to my boys. He has a warm heart and is incredibly patient with them. Dax and Shane become his shadow anytime he is around. This last weekend I went to his football game against La Quinta. it is always fun to watch him play, and I am sad to think that I won't live close to my family anymore. Those weekend trips to Palm Springs once a month will be missed, I mean, what could be more fun than a house on a private water ski lake? Family to go with it.

So, I was asleep and Brad decided that it was time to take the training wheels off of Daxon's bike. Four attempts later, he was on his own. I thought it was a big deal and I was upset that Brad didn't come in to wake me up to witness this historic event. I instead got to watch his first rides on a camera. Anyway, WAY TO GO DAX! I can't believe that he is going to be four next month. Where has the time gone?

Blah...

What happens when Shane and a berry smoothie collide.
Just a cute picture of the Daxman.

Brad and I just celebrated our #5 anniversary. We went to K-1 Speedway (really fast go-carts), and of course the group that we ended up in was the local honda car club (that all happened to have their own helmets and racing gloves). I came in dead last and Brad came in second, only because he said that some shmuck wouldn't let him pass. All in all, a fun night!

You know how there are times that you are so tired that you don't want to do anything. Well, this is one of those times. So, I am going to post some pictures to get me by, and then I have a much longer post coming up to show what the heck I have been up to.

Spider Webs

My pumpkin grew its own spider webs and just in time for halloween. It was really considerate of it to do that, yet really gross. Nothing like pulling off the lid and a huge ball of white and black fuzz following it...
My boys wanted me to dress up with them so I borrowed Daxon's wig and threw the rest of the clothes together five minutes before we left to trick-or-treat. I am almost convinced to make my real hair into dreads. The boys ended up with a ton of candy and most of it will end up being thrown away. I am mean, I know, but my boys already have too much energy.
I made some banana bread the other day, and the best part of it is the dough. I don't like dough, but my boys take after my husband and chow it down.

By the way, does anyone have any advice for weaning a child off binkies? Shane did fine when we took the bottles away from him but we are having quite the time with the binkies... I am all ears!

Happy Halloween!

Ok, so I have ignored this blog thing for a while so now it is time to play catch up... Daxon was supposed to have a halloween party at school this last Friday, but because of all the nasty smoke outside it was cancelled. One of the activities that they were going to do was pumpkin carving so I was stuck with this uncarved pumpkin and the above picture is what I came up with. It only took three hours, no big deal right? More like a waste of time...
This is a blurry picture of our ward party last night. The cute girl in the picture is Miss Swann, so since Dax was Captian Jack Sparrow we had to snap a quick picture. It is funny that the times that you want a great picture the camera fails to do its job and your child wants nothing to do with having a picture taken. Daxon was probably just dissapointed because earlier that day he told me that he wanted his dad to dress up as Miss Swann. We will just say that is why he didn't want to cooperate. I do have to say that she makes a much better Elizabeth than Brad would have.
Last night Shane decided to be a stinker and slept a whopping four hours. Taking into consideration his bedtime is at 7:30, and he usually wakes up at 8:30 for a total of 13 hours of peaceful rest, I was quite annoyed. He finally fell back asleep around 6:30 this morning and this is how we found him at around 10:00. He is usually an easy child so when nights like these happen, I shouldn't complain.
I was in Utah last week for finalizing our house stuff, and since I haven't seen my Grandma Christian in a year or so I decided to meet up with her for dinner. It was great to see her, and catch up . She offered to help me unpack my stuff when I finally make the move to Utah and I am going to hit her up on that.
I walked outside the other night to take the trash out and I literally almost stepped on this frog, and even though it was the kids bedtime I could not resist bringing them outside. I just wanted to see which one of my boys would have the nerve to touch it first. Shane won. Oh yeah, on another note, it was not that long ago that Brad squished a frog accidently. He was closing the garage door and it was timed just right that it came down right on top of the frog as it was hopping into our garage and the door smashed it in half...literally. It was really gross and what made it worse was that Daxon was the one to find it first the next morning. He thought it was really cool, I have to disagree.

Rambles

The Watts' family are finally offical homeowners. I know it took us a while but needless to say... we are excited! It is nice to finally visualize where we are going to spend at least the next few years. It should be finished in April, so in the mean time we have a couple of rentals in mind.

I had to go to the dentist today because I had a tooth that I thought had a cavity in it. Don't you love it when you have what you think is a minor problem and it turns into something worse, not to mention a lot more expensive? Well, my check/possible filling turned into a crown. Come to find out I had a cracked tooth because when I sleep at night I clench my jaw tight the entire night. You can't imagine the headaches that I sometimes wake up with! Apparently I bite so hard that after time passes of this retarded behavior I cracked a tooth. Well, because it was my very back molar, in order for the dentist to grind all the way around the tooth, he shredded up the tissue surrounding it. I am expecting it to soon become a huge massive canker sore, since even the smallest scratch in my mouth always becomes a huge canker. Does that happen to anyone else, or am I just naturally a wussy? All I can say is thank goodness for laughing gas and that numbing shot that they give you, without them I have a feeling that most of us would have some pretty nasty teeth...

By the way, if anyone wants to read a really funny story click on my friend Ashley's blog. It is the one titled Urine and Diet Coke... If anyone has had a child that has cut their hair or someone elses' then my friend Amy has a great story as well. You see, this is why I love the blogging world, because you hear stories that happen to others that you can only hope won't happen to you, OR you can relate. In my case I can usually relate.

Ahoy!

There was some random guy that came up to our table wanting to make balloon things, so, five dollars later he made what is supposed to be a pirate hat, which Brad the birthday boy is wearing, and Daxon a sword. I am sure it is no suprise that they completly exploded two minutes later due to biting of the balloons... a waste?

Well, we did Disneyland again, however this time I let the boys wear their pirate costumes that they are going to wear for Halloween. Shane is wearing the one that I made. Daxon's looked pretty plain next to Shane's so I had to add some details like the trim and the ties. While there I took them to the pirate island and they met Captain Jack Sparrow again. Oh, and a FYI, if you are on the pirate island alone with 2 or more young kids beware because there are caves there that if one child goes into (ie. Daxon) then you have no idea where he/she went because there are multiple exits. Stressful! They were pretty dang cute and I can't wait to dress them up again for Halloween, because then they will have the fake dirty faces and pirate wigs... more pirate pictures to come.

It's official...

We are moving to... UTAH!!! Brad signed an offer letter, and we are moving in November. It is a long story how it came about, but to make it short, he was offered a territory in Salt Lake. We are really excited to get back to the mountains and family. Beehive State here come the Watts!

Girls Weekend

Well, I just had a exciting weekend with my friends Amy and Sunshine. We stayed at the W Hotel in San Diego and it was really modern almost to a fault. Amy said it kind of reminded her of a really nice college dorm room. Do you see it, too? I am sure that you can guess what the weekend was filled with... you guessed it, shopping, eating, laughing, story telling, bonding, complaining, and more shopping. I am so thankful for such wonderful friends, and I cherished every moment of this past weekend.

I went to the San Diego Museum of Contemporary Art, and as I was walking out of the museum I heard jets flying over my head. I looked up and there was an ad for Zappos.com. There were five jets that somehow created the very expensive advertisement. HMMM, it sound like a waste of fuel to me...

What we seemed to do best.... shop.

We ate at Laurel Resturant, which had the coolest atmosphere. I think I loved it even more because it looked like the dining room that I want, just a lot bigger. I love how we all color coordinate with eachother and the resturant. I know, its dorky but I promise it just happened like that, and great friends think alike, right?

Our dinner, and Amy and Sunshine's funny hand positions... I think that Sunshine did the better Vanna White impersonation.

Dessert at Extrodinary Desserts, it was so much fun and I have never been so stuffed in my life. We finally left the place at about midnight and walked back to the hotel. After a full day of walking and shopping you can only imagine the sore feet... It is a sacrifice a girl has to take for cute heels that aren't normally worn. All in all, great weekend and even greater friends...

I need to see the doctor

So, yesterday morning Daxon woke up screaming and holding his ear.( The previous two nights he was sick and kept both Brad and I up half of the night.) Well, he started saying to me,"Mom, I need to go to the doctor!", then began to cry, and then started screaming that phrase REPEATEDLY. So here I am, contacting the pediatrician only to find that he is booked. They then tell me to take him to an urgent care. They may as well have told me to take him to Tijuana for help, because the last time we took Shane to an urgent care in this town he ended up in the emergency room. So, as I am frantically calling Brad to help me find a decent urgent care, flipping through the phone book, changing a poopie diaper, and putting some clothes on myself, I realize that I don't hear Daxon crying anymore. I run to the garage door to find it unlocked, garage door open and no Dax. I run outside and I see him outside of our gate, walking on the side of the main street sreaming that his ear hurts and that he needs a doctor. This is where I reached the point where I think to myself that I may need a doctor, too. I felt so bad for him, because to him I wasn't hurrying fast enough to get him to the doctor. Five minutes later, we arrived at the hospital, only to find out that they don't take our insurance (why they don't take a PPO, I have no idea because most of the people that live up here don't even have insurance). Shane was screaming because I was out of fruit snacks, and it was past his naptime. Dax and I were so desperate at this point that I decided to pay out of pocket. Come to find out, he had an infection in his ears, throat, nose, and eyes! No wonder he was so uncomfortable. He is now feeling much better, and I have finally regained my composure. I may not need that doctor afterall...

Finally!

I am ashamed to say that Brad and I have not been through the temple in over two years! There is no excuse for why that happened, but nonetheless I am very glad that we went today.

Oh, and the reason why I realized that I hadn't been in a couple of years is because my temple clothing was adjusted for a fat, pregnant lady. Yes, the last time I was at the temple I was prego with Shane... AAAHHHH!

Happy Birthday, by the way, to my brother Caleb who is a hippie. You are missed by your nephews.

Contiunation of the awards

Sorry, this post needs to go below the next one to make more sense, but you will still get it... Just read the next one first and then come back to this one. I am still figuring this blog thing out.


For the coolest and nastiest white trash beard the award goes to:
The guy sitting next to the bald dude with the sweet chops

For the best monster truck driver, the award easily goes to:
The 21yr old Canadian chick that drove a truck resembling a Triceratops head
Last but not least the award for the cutest boys there, goes to:
The monster truck loving, Watts hicks

The Monster Trash Rally

As promised to some of you... here are the pictures of the Monster Truck Crash and Bash. The event was held a few miles from our house, so you better believe that there were some sweet looking hicks. Yes, I have the pictures to prove it.

And now for the awards... For the cutest shirt and most colorful hair the award goes to:
Little Miss Sunshine
For the bitchinest mullet, the award goes to:

The Announcer

Who did your top award go to???