Potty Training

Since I'm off of work til next Tuesday I am attempting potty training Ryan. I think he is ready, as a lot of the time he wants to sit on the potty. The question now is, Do I have the patience to do it. :o)

I want to move the boys downstairs in hopes that will start sleeping through the night again. When he spends the night at Grandma & Grandpa's he sleeps in the basement and always sleeps through the night. The dilemma is that there isn't a bathroom down there I don't want to be potty training while they sleep down there. I'm hoping to get the potty done and then move them down there. I might put the little potty down there for the first lil bit, just in case.

March Madness Sales Event!

I am so excited! I have a very special goal to achieve "Star Consultant Status" by March 15th. To help me accomplish this goal I must sell $1000 in one day. Sounds like a lot, doesn't it? This is where you come in:

I am offering a very special discount one day only! Contact me on Thursday March 10th during the following hours and participate in my, One Day Only, March Madness Sale!

Call on Thursday March 10th and receive the following discounts:

7am-9am 20% discount off your order
9:01am-11am 15% discount off your order
11:01am-9pm 10% discount off your order

I will be ready to receive orders at 7am either by phone (801)885-0505 or on my website @ www.marykay.com/lesliemorgan2010 If you call and get my voice mail, Please leave your order (the time of call will be recorded).

Special... Sharing Bonus!
Schedule a skin care class within the next 2 wks with @ least 3 of your friends and receive your favorite Mary Kay glamour product FREE as a special thank you gift from me!

Thank you in advance for participating in my $1000 day event to help me accomplish my Star Consultant goal!

Thanks!
Leslie

Thank You Bonus!
When I reach my goal, I will have a drawing and one lucky customer will get their entire order free! Also, please feel free to pass this offer on to your friends who do not already have a Mary Kay Beauty Consultant.

The Spunky Little Monkey Giveaway

Go check out The Spunky Little Monkey Blog for an awesome giveaway!

http://thespunkylittlemonkey.blogspot.com/2011/02/giveaway.html

Ryan's First Major Owie

Last Monday the boys were @ my In-Laws. They made a poster for Uncle Chase, who just returned from his mission to Guatamala 2 days ago. I think they had fun doing it :) I wasn't there. They got to strip down to underware/diapers so they didn't get paint on their clothes.

I got a text from Phill saying that Ryan had burned his arm and they were taking him to the hospital. Here is the story:

The fireplace was on and Ryan being a sneaky lil guy grabbed the remote from behind my MIL and changed the channel. She took the remote away and turned around to change the channel back and Ryan decided he'd sneak behind her... on the other side of her was the gas fireplace whose glass cover burns hot when it is on. He leaned against the fireplace and burned his arm... lil naked man that he was :o) His lil finger to his elbow.

The Next Day

Day 3

Day 5

The goings on....

Well, Phill started his 2nd job this wk. Let me just say wow! I didn't realize how exhausting it is to be with the kids 24/7! I'm exhaused, the boys are exhausted and I'm know Phill is exhausted getting up in the am going to be @ work by 8 and then straight to his next job, coming home for dinner, then back to wk only to get home around midnight or later, fall asleep only to get up the next morning and do it all over again! I have to say I think we all look forward to the days that he only works one of the jobs. I love you babe! thx for all your hard work!

The boys have been getting into everything! :o) My make-up... again! one of my Be Radiant Baked Powder... completely gone... ground into the carpet in their bedroom!

Kendrick knows how to turn on the microwave.... although he doesn't know how long he's putting things in for! Yesterday he put a roll I had made in to heat it up. I don't know how long it had been in the microwave... When it registered in my head that the microwave was on I looked @ it and saw it glowing red and full of smoke!!!! Nice! I know! Needless to say the house got a little cold as I opened all the doors and windows to air it out, the roll was a chunk of burnt nothingness and the microwave was fun to clean... not really. :o) Luckily we did not have a fire and our house did not burn down! I did decide we need to get a fire exstinguisher though! :o)

Ryan is still running aroung after his brother. Climbing up onto the top bunk and getting stuck since he doesn't know how to get down the ladder. Still not talking very much but Iguess that will come with time. :o)

Resolutions

Well... I haven't been very good at my resolutions so far this year! Obviously the blogging once/week hasn't happened since my last post was my bday! The cleaning... well lets not talk about that ;o) The Organizing... working on it. I got my pantry organized the other day and now when I open it I just smile! - Love it! :o) The Morgan 5 - I'm doing ok on. Hit and miss some days but I try. Emergency Prep - haven't done anything with. My Mary Kay business - didn't really start trying till this wk. That is pretty much how my resolutions are all going. I'll keep working on them though. :o) How are your's going?

Happy Birthday!

... to me! Yay! It is officially the beginning of the end! ....The end of my 20's, that is. This time next year I will be in my 30's!!!! Can anyone else just not believe that?! I swear it seems like just yesterday.... that's totally a mom line right? :o).... that I was a boy crazy teenager!

Lucky for me it wasn't yesterday and I am blessed with a wonderful family! One that sometimes drives me crazy but I love you all regardless! To my siblings and parents, I love you and am grateful that I was able to have grown up with all of you in my life and for the great memories I have of all of you!

To those who joined our family through marriage along the way: You all rock! I'm glad you joined the fam and love our craziness in spite of us! ;o) ... because you are all crazy too! hehe

To the family I joined when Phill and I married: I love you all and feel like I've known you forever! Maybe I have. :o) Thanks for all you do for me! (Katie you are included in this bunch even though you joined after me)

To my Husband: I love you! Thank you for putting up with all my craziness, stubborness and faults! Thank you for loving me inspite of it all! Thank you for laughing with me...NOT at me! ;o) Although you do that too sometimes. Thank you for trying.

To my boys: I'm so grateful to have you in my life! I don't know what I would do without you! Well, aside from sleep a little more and clean a little less. I love you both and love to see you growing and learning! Kendrick: Thank you for making me smile and all the love you give me. Ilove just listening to you playing in the other room and thinking to myself, "This is what life is really all about and makes it worth it!" Ryan: You are my sweet baby boy! I love your laugh and watching you chasing after your brother! Watching you grow and simply the fact that you gave me a zerbit the other day, laughed, did it again, laughed again, over and over!

I love you all! Thank you for all the memories and love!

BTW "Cut the Cake" by John McCutcheon is THE BEST birthday song ever!

Lying

So my little boy is growing up! Three years old and running around trying to shoot everything and making a gun out of anything he can find! And now, lying! I never knew it started so young!

So the other day I opened the refridgerator and found an egg in the leftovers from breakfast! Egg and half the shell... hopefully the rest of the egg shell made it into the trash because I haven't found it. Anyways, knowing K and that for some reason he has always liked playing with the eggs I asked him why there was an egg in the leftovers. He said, "I dont' know" I said, "Did you break the egg and put it in there?" He said no. I asked,"Are you lying?" He said, "Yes, No!" Sorry honey, too late to revize once you've spilled the beans! :o)

That was the only slip up though, Now its just lying... How do you get it to stop?

New Year's Resolutions

I know it's a lil early for new years resolutions but I'm gicin 'em to you anyways. :o)

In no particular order:

Be a better wife and mom
Get organized and stay organized
Post at least once a week on my blogs (family, craft and cooking)
Really put and effort into my Mary Kay business - www.marykay.com/lesliemorgan2010
Upcycle and handmade only - I'll try for 3 months and see how it goes
Clip coupons and USE them! - part of being organized - I know
Keep my house clean
Enjoy the little things
Not stress so much - especially when it comes to noise
Really try to do my "Morgan 5" aka "Morning 5"
Write down something I'm thankful for everyday - to help me be more grateful
Be Prepared - get my emergency preparedness stuff in order

I know some of these are general things but I'm not gonna post every little detail for the world to know.

Feel free to ask me how I'm doing on any of these things! I do better when I know someone is gonna check up on me!

Turkeys

Here are some turkeys that survived the holidays! There were 6 altogether.

One in the middle of the street!

4 on the neighbors lawn - u'd think my in-laws lived in a rural area - Nope just Provo

"Open Carefully So the Love Won't Escape"

In the 1987 Ensign my grandpa, Rex C. Stallings, wrote a very special article in our family. It is about the true meaning of Christmas .... Enjoy!

When I was a young boy, I very much wanted an electric train for Christmas. I put in my order and then waited for the big day to come. I dreamed of trains at night, daydreamed about them during the day, and looked at them in the catalogs and in the store windows. I knew exactly what I wanted—a black train with real smoke and a whistle, on a figure-eight track. Because I knew my parents loved me and did all they could for me, I looked anxiously forward to Christmas.

When Christmas finally came, I rushed excitedly into our living room. There was an electric train—a second-hand train on an oval track. I tried to look excited, but I was terribly disappointed. My father, however, was excited about the train. He lay on the carpet with me, ran the train, and talked to me about how fun it was.

But it didn’t help, because someone had mentioned to me that if you were good, you got what you wanted for Christmas. Well, I knew I was at least as good as my friend Leonard. He got a train just like the one I wanted.

I had a similar experience many years later as a teenager in high school. Everyone had a ski sweater with a deer-head pattern knitted across the front. I wanted one. I told my parents what kind I wanted and what color it had to be. On Christmas morning, when I ripped the package open, I found a beautiful ski sweater. But there was no deer head on the front of it.

I was crushed. How could I ever go to school wearing that sweater? It didn’t look at all like everyone else’s sweaters. True, it was nice, but it just wouldn’t do. Once again I was very disappointed.

I was too immature at the time to look beyond my own selfish desires, beyond the gift, to the giver. My parents loved me, and they sacrificed to give me not only gifts, but all the things I needed. How they loved me!

I remembered this when I became a father. We didn’t have a lot of money, so we tried to get things that were practical. But many a Christmas Eve, as my wife and I prepared the presents around the tree and finished wrapping the gifts, I would find myself in a state of near-panic. I would think, “What if they open these gifts and don’t like them? What if they think we haven’t given them the things they want because we don’t love them?”

To help lessen this panic, I tried to postpone the moment of opening the presents. We started a tradition that on Christmas morning we would all get up, dress, say family prayers, and eat breakfast. Then we would go in around the tree. And just in case postponement didn’t do the trick, I would give “the lecture.”

“We have a lot of presents,” I’d begin. “We want you to know that inside each box and each package is wrapped up our great love for you. So we will open the presents very carefully, one at a time. If we just rip them open and grab whatever is inside, the love may escape unnoticed. After all, the love that is with the gift is greater than the gift itself.”

After my lecture we sat around the tree and opened our gifts, not in wild excitement, but in quiet appreciation and love for one another.

These examples from my life seem insignificant in light of the greatest gift of all—the gift we celebrate at Christmas. Yet in a way, there is a simple parallel. The scriptures say, “God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son.” (John 3:16.) But that gift is not popular in the world today. It is not the latest fad, the kind of gift that makes us popular with the crowd.

How often I have thought back to the days of my youth, truly sorry that I understood so little. So often we kneel in prayer and order our spiritual blessings from Heavenly Father, asking for what we feel we really want and need, and instead receive blessings that are good for us, blessings of love. And we are disappointed! We don’t understand; we feel unloved, unimportant, and deserted.

Perhaps we should examine more thoughtfully and prayerfully the gifts we are given. Maybe they are not exactly what we expected or asked for, but in the maturity of our lives, we will find them to be gifts of love. For truly the Lord offers us all that he has.

My Baby's One!

Happy Birthday to my sweet baby boy! The year has flown by! I'm so glad you came into our family and that I get to be your mother! I love you!

Mary Kay

I now have my own business! I am selling the awesome Mary Kay products! Mary Kay is an AMAZING company with amazing products! They back all their products with 100% satisfaction guaranteed!!!! Check out my website!

www.marykay.com/lesliemorgan2010

Add my button to your blog and help me spread the word!

Ryan Start's Cereal!

I started Ryan on cereal this week and he can't get enough! He grabs my hand and tries to shove the whole spoon down his throat! :o)

The Boys

I had the camera out today so I took some pics of my boys ... enjoy!

Brothers

A couple cute pix of the boys. Kendrick loves his brother... sometimes maybe a lil too much. ;o) I know all you mom's know what I'm talkin about. Ryan loves watching him and tries to get up and go to him even though he is not very mobile yet. I know it'll be here sooner than I know. He's scootin and rollin around so it's just a matter of time.

Hanging out on the couch @ Grandma & Grandpa's

Chillin in my chair at home

Another cute pic of Ryan

JT, Payslei, Kendrick and Ryan

JT and Payslei came to play a couple of wks ago. We had a blast! JT & Pays helped me make banana pancakes for breakfast (everyone else was still asleep when they got there). After breakfast they played inside for a little bit than went outside and rode their scooters. It was cold but no snow in site so we took advantage of it. They played in the yard for a lil bit than we went on a walk.

After the walk Phill and I were freezing so we made the kids come in and we made hot chocolate! Yummy! We had a snack than went back to Dave & Gina's and waited for the carpets to be cleaned and ate lunch! Good ol' mac & cheese.

JT riding his scooter

Kendrick riding his scooter

Payslei riding her scooter

Kendrick had a hard time getting up the ramp so he is carrying his scooter

SCOOTER PARKING ONLY

Ryan all bundled up. He couldn't be left outta the fun.

JT being a ham for the camera and rolling on the lawn.

Ryan's 4 months old!

I can't believe my baby is already 4 months old!

Yes he is starting to sit up on his own! CRAZY!

Ryan's 1 Week Pictures

I know, the blessing was after his one wk pix and I'm doing this backwards but Kims been buggin me to get these on here so here they are. I will have to update with more recent pix later. I left the battery for the camera in the charger @ home. :o)

Ryan's thinking...Oh I smell mommy! Let me try and eat this!... Mommy's thinking... Sorry bud that is not what you are think it is! :o)

Think Kendrick is comparing the size of their feet? Nope! Kendrick occupied picking lint out of his toes. :o)

An adorable one of Phill & Kendrick

Our most recent family picture

Ryan's Blessing

Here are some pix I took of Ryan in his Blessing outfit. We blessed him the first Sunday in Dec. and had family over for snacks after.