I've been tagged.....AGAIN :-)

I recently have been "tagged" by three of my friends. Thankfully, they all tagged me for basically the same thing, so instead of having to do several different ones, I can kill two birds with one stone. Except for me, that would never happen, I have terrible aim. Just ask Zach.......

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 asking them to read your blog.

1. I have secret desires to be a Martha Stewart. Not exactly her (she IS a convicted felon), but it would be cool if my house could always look SUPER AWESOME all the time - always elegant and classy.

2. My heart is super speedy. It's been a "diagnosed" issue for several years now, but no one has been able to figure out why. I guess I'm just destined to be fast. My resting heart rate is usually about 90-100 bpm.

3. I love Charmed. It is my sinful indulgence :-) For those of you who don't know what I am talking about, Charmed is a TV show about three sisters who are witches. I know, it sounds retarded, and maybe it is.....but I like it. There are a million times a day I wish I could do any of the things they can do! Freeze time, close my eyes and be somewhere else....etc etc.

4. I can't handle anything supernatural. Aside from Charmed that is. X-Files will give me nightmares for weeks. Scary movies are a definite no at our house. When Zach and I were dating, he made me go see 'The Grudge' with him. I forced my best friend and roomie to come (it was a big group anyway, they weren't being third wheels. besides, its not like the grudge was a good date movie!) I closed my eyes and covered my ears for 2/3 of the movie and still was freaked out of my mind for days after seeing it. My roomies and I came home and watched "The Lamb of God" and slept with all the lights on. It took me 3 times before I could watch "Signs" without closing my eyes for some parts too. I know, I'm a huge wimp, but really, I cannot handle scary movies. Actually, I just can't handle anything scary. Writing this is actually giving me the creeps, because it's making me remember all these scary things. (go ahead and laugh, but I'm serious!)

5. I love to dance. I used to dance a ton in college, swing, ballet, country, ballroom, and my whole life I have always danced around everywhere. When I took ballet in college, I would come home from class and dance around our apartment (practicing our routines). If I could be anything, it would be a ballerina....but a ballroom dancer is a close second. I would love to be on Dancing with the Stars :-D

6. Ok, here is a secret truth....I actually really love Idaho. Don't tell Zach! I love going to Idaho Falls, because it really feels like my other home. Sometimes I get sad here when its winter time, because I miss the snow. I don't miss the October to June snow, but I miss the snow occasionally :-) Plus, I miss all our family there. And for all his "tough guy" exterior, Zach's dad is one of my most favorite people ever! So even though I keep telling Zach otherwise, Idaho has really grown on me!

As for tagging people..... I think I will spare you any tagging this time. I tagged people last time, so I'll skip it this time around :-)

Thankful for.....

Fabulous kids! Happy Thanksgiving everyone, slightly belated, and a happy birthday to Aunt Kels!! Our Thanksgiving was good, for the most part :-) We headed down to the Glasmann farm on Wednesday. Prior to that, Kayden had started seeming out of sorts on Monday. By Wednesday, he was pretty miserable. My poor baby was sick!! Congested, coughing, and with his blocked tear ducts, he had tears just pouring down his face all the time. But amazingly enough, he still would smile and grin at Grandma, Grandpa, and all his aunts and uncles. Thanksgiving day was his worst day. He was so miserable, it was heart wrenching to see and hear. He lost his voice! He must have had the worst sore throat, and he just totally lost his voice. It was AWFUL to hear him cry. It was just this raspy sound, and you could tell sometimes that he was really worked up, but the sound just wouldn't come. It nearly broke my heart! But he is such a sweet boy, he still would smile at all his relatives and was a really really good baby the whole day. I was amazed that he could be so sick and still have such a sweet disposition. We got so lucky with our kids!
Thanksgiving was extra fun though, because that morning, when Keegan and I woke up and came up to say good morning to Grandma and Grandpa (Daddy and Kayden were still sleeping), who should walk in the door but.... Jayme and Virginia!! My brother and sister-in-law drove through the night from Orem, UT to surprise the fam for Thanksgiving! He was supposed to have work, but managed to get time off and decided to drive out for turkey day, since they aren't going to be coming home for Christmas. It was so cool to have them there! We haven't seen them in several months, so it was really fun to have this fabulous surprise!
We also had some friends come down and hang out. The Dixons came down and we got to have a little fun being with them. I'm sure we probably exposed them to more germs than they were planning on, but it was tons of fun to have them around. Keegan had tons of fun with Keyan and Brynna, and Zach and Jeff got to shoot shotguns and clay pigeons with my Dad and brothers. Sadly, between taking care of sick kids, Alissa and I didn't get a chance to do anything special, so we will have to try again when we can leave the kids with the hubbies!
One fun thing we got to see was the hauling of the Christmas trees by helicopter. My family lives on a Christmas tree farm, and though we don't have any trees that get shipped out on trucks or anything, our neighbors still do. I was excited that they had been running the helicopter this week, and was hoping that Keegan would get a chance to see it! For those of you who don't know much about tree farms, on larger farms when they harvest the trees, they cut a bunch of trees, wrap them up with ropes, and the helicopter comes. There is a man down on the ground, and the helicopter comes by with a long rope dangling from it, and the man on the ground hooks the trees to the rope on the helicopter and the copter hauls the trees to a central location where they will be baled, loaded, and shipped out on the trucks. It's pretty cool to watch, the copter never lands the whole time, just goes back and forth between picking up the trees and dropping them off. The neat thing was, they were hauling trees that were RIGHT next to my parents house, just off the backyard. The Dixons arrived just in the nick of time, and we took all the kids out to watch the helicopter. It was awesome!
Unfortunately, the fun wasn't to last....I started getting a sore throat, and on Saturday, I noticed Keegan was looking a little unusual - red-rimmed eyes, pale face. By the evening, my poor sweet boy had a fever of 103 and was really miserable himself. He was up a lot throughout the night just because he was so feverish. Motrin helped some, but as soon as it would wear off, the fever would come right back! Sunday found the boys and I home on the couch, while Zach went for sacrament with my family and then came home after to take care of us.
Aside from the sickness, we got to spend time with our families, see Uncle Jace (Zach's brother), and just have a relaxing Thanksgiving. I guess you don't have much choice to be other than relaxed when you don't have much energy to do anything but lay around :-) I was really impressed at how good our boys were through their illnesses. Kayden is lots better, and hopefully Keegan and I will mend quickly as well. I'm hoping that since Kayden recovered so quickly that it will just be a short bug! We hope you all have had your own wonderful Thanksgivings and were able to be grateful for all the blessings that we have. We definitely are thankful for our sweet family, our extended families, and all our friends!

Wordless Wednesday

Kayden at birth (6 lbs) and Kayden at 4 months (15 1/2 lbs)
Well, this isn't entirely wordless....Taking a page out of my friend's book, I'm going to just post some cute pics on Wednesdays - old, new, whatever! Thanks for the inspiration Jesse!

Brothers....

Here is a little clip of the boys. Kayden loves to watch Keegan and finds everything he does hilarious! Keegan loves to act as silly as possible to get Kayden to laugh and squeal.....

FHE Turkeys

Tonight for Family home evening we talked about Thanksgiving. This month our lessons have been focused around gratitude, so this evening continued along those lines! We talked about why we celebrate Thanksgiving and how it came about. For our activity, we traced our hands and turned them into turkeys!! Keegan had a blast. He really loves artsy activities! He definitely has some artistic flair - he loves to color and is really good at staying in the lines. Tonight I pulled out something different and exciting - WATER COLORS!!! I know, I know. Amazing, huh? Well, if you are three years old, it is a hot item, trust me! We even traced Kayden's hand (while he was asleep on the floor) and Keegan decorated it for him. Zach's turkey is quite unique - he told me he was going for an abstract look. I think they all turned out fabulous! On a side note, tonight Kayden ate toxic waste! Don't freak out.... in our family, that is code for avocado. You know that line from the new "Grinch Who Stole Christmas" ? Jim Carrey (the grinch) picks up some garbage marked with a nuclear waste symbol and says "One man's toxic waste is another man's potpurri!" We are constantly quoting that line whenever anyone mentions avocado. But I checked out this book from the library about feeding your baby, and it mentioned that avocado is a fabulous thing to give them. So I decided to try it! I pulled out my baby food mill and put in some chunks of fresh avocado and ground it up. I mixed it with a little formula to thin it out - and Kayden downed the whole bowl of it! I couldn't believe it. Just goes to show, some people will eat anything......

Transformers!

WOW. WOW, I love Transformers. What a cool movie! This Saturday, we had a "date night in" with our friends, Jeff and Alissa Dixon. They brought their kiddos over and we piled up some pillows and blankets on the floor in our downstairs bedroom and let the kids stay up late and watch Ratatouille. They had so much fun! Keegan was so excited for his friends to come over and watch a movie in "the office downstairs." Do you remember how exciting that used to be to have friends over? Not that Zach and I don't get excited to have friends over, but man... the simple pleasures of life when you are 3 years old! He was ecstatic when Keyan and Brynna arrived and ran around hollering about watching Ratatouille. I'm seriously amazed at how well he says that word, too. It seems like he stumbles over easier words, but Ratatouille just seems to roll off his tongue! Well....back to my story. So while we put the kids downstairs with their movie, we "adults" (I use that term loosely) ;-) settled up in the living room to watch Transformers on "the big screen." Jeff brought over their sub woofer and he and Zach tinkered around setting it up with our stereo to give us ladies the full experience. I'm thinking that if our next door neighbors liked us before, they might not any longer! At least in a townhouse, there isn't any one above or below us. Anyway, we watched Transformers, and it was AWESOME! I have to say that without the sub woofer, it would not have been the same movie. Zach was telling me this before we started watching it, and I wasn't convinced that it made that much of a difference. But it did - it was so cool. It was a cool movie regardless, but feeling the rumble of the robots enhanced the experience. In the words of Todd (bwana, zach's dad, whatever you may know him as) it was "sweeeeeet." I can't wait to watch it on the Beattie's projector over Christmas, or at my parents on their big screen and surround sound at Thanksgiving! If you haven't seen it yet...borrow it, rent it, call me and come over! It was cool.
Aside from that, the kids had fun watching their movie, and then they crashed on the floor downstairs until we parents had finished our movie. There are some pictures of them watching their movie, along with some older pictures that I somehow overlooked in past posts. Sometime at my parents, my sister and I were taking a walk with the boys and we stopped to let Keegan climb on the old tractor that was my Grandpa's when he owned the farm. It is probably at least 40 years old.... Anyway, it is parked up by my family's house and Keegan loves to climb up and pretend he is driving it. Unfortunately, the steering wheel is deteriorating after years of use and abuse, so after he was done he realized his hands were all black and thought it was pretty cool. So I've included a few of those pics too!
Basically, we had a fun weekend, even though I was a little bummed that we had some friends offer us tickets to the Beaver/UW game and we decided not to go. I just don't think it would have worked out with Kayden. He doesn't care for a bottle too much! He prefers the real thing.
Oh, before I forget! Kayden rolled over on Saturday! It was so cute - I had just finished feeding him, and set him down on his belly on the floor. He turned his head to look up at me and started to roll onto his side (you know how they tip precariously and seem to teeter there, on the brink....) I called out that he was about to roll over and Zach and Keegan came over. Keegan started cheering him on "Go Kayden! You can do it buddy!" It was adorable!! Keegan (and zach and I) were so proud when he finally muscled his bulk over onto his back! Our little chubby man is so sweet. And he is probably just days away from rolling from his back to his belly, he gets his hips and legs rotated, but his upper body can't make it over his chubby arm. He is SO different from Keegan, it's fun to have a little porky baby though! I love every roll......
Hope you enjoy the novel, sorry I get carried away!!

Halloween Pics!

Halloween fun!

Well, it has been a totally fun week for us Beatties! Halloween was a blast, Keegan got too much candy (as all kids generally do), but was so proud of himself and his candy gathering skills! It was so funny to see him. I don't think he knew what half of the candy was (and he will never even eat half of it) but he would stop playing to run over and gaze at his bucket with a supremely proud look in his eye. We went to our ward's trunk-or-treat the night before Halloween and then went down to Corvallis for Halloween to let Cap'n Hook (Keegan) go trick or treating with his first mate, Smeed (Grandma!). Keegan had a lot of fun, Kayden slept through most of it! We had some of our good friends from our ward here dress up as the Incredibles. It was awesome! I am including their picture because it is just too cute. I loved their outfits, I should try to be more creative like that! We also painted the K's room this weekend. It looks AWESOME. I am really happy with it, the color turned out even better than I had hoped! I can't wait to get the rest of the pictures up on the walls, we've only lived her for almost 6 weeks....oh well, slowly but surely, right? Also, we went to a Halloween party the Friday before Halloween and Zach dressed up as GI Joe and I was Cinderella/princess.I made an attempt at Martha Stewart and made some mummy cupcakes. They turned out pretty cool, not quite Martha, but I bet she doesn't have a 3-year-old sous chef! It was way too much work and I will never do it again! Leave it to Martha... Anyway, all in all, we had a great Halloween and are enjoying Keegan's candy!! Oh, and Kayden started cereal this week and LOVES it. Can't get enough of the stuff. He had his four month appointment and the doc told us to start him on some cereal so I can get a break.... He still nurses every 2 hours throughout the day. He weighed 15 lbs!! Amazing, huh? For those of you who remember Keegan at this age, he weighed 15 lbs when he was about 10 months old. My little Kayden is a fatty!! I love it!

Video post, I hope!

Here is a little video from our trip to the pumpkin patch. There is a little barn the train goes through that is "haunted." I hope this works!! I'll get some pics up from halloween and all soon - I'm so tired now, I've got to go to bed!