Do you ever feel like you are having an out of body experience!

I still have no camera :(. Hopefully though I will soon. I am getting one for Christmas with a lot of help from my mom but I have been waiting for Mike to have some free time to go with me to find one we will like. Hopefully I will get one either today or tomorrow. I can't believe how long it has been since I have posted a real post but here is my attempt to brief everyone on teh last two months!

1.) We went to Utah and saw all the family and had a blast.

2.) Trick or treating was a great success we finished just as the rain hit so we were pretty proud of our timing.

3.)We went to the Hogle Zoo and the Dinosaur museum and the girls had a blast.

4.)We had a get together with all Mikes Clogging friends and can I just say its a wonder that all those guys married so well. just kidding We laughed the whole night! (Thanks Michele)

5.)Mike has worked like crazy since he has been back. I have just been plain crazy.

6.)We had a babysitting swap with a friend of ours and Zoe hurt her arm while playing with their little boy. (Jumping off little kid chairs into ball pits on a cement floor has now become a big fat no thank you in our house)

7.)Four doctor visits via the ER, the base clinic, and the orthopedic clinc, 6 doctors, 8 x-rays, and six days later it was finally discovered that Zoe had a nursemaids elbow (dislocated elbow) and was reset. I don't know what we would have done without the help of our Bishop!!!

8.)Zoe has been in a slpint for 4 weeks and has had about ten more x-rays since but has become quite the pro of out patient care.

9.)If there is a family that needed a babysitter in minot lets just say that baysitter was me and it was sometime in the last two weeks.

10.)Isa turned one and cut 6 teeth within 2 months!!

11.)Isa stands on her own!

12.)Isa says momma, dadda, silly, this, ta da, bye and (while mimicking Zoe) I mad.

13.)We have put new meaning to the Griswald family Christmas ..... AGAIN!

14.)Some crazy person backed into Mikes car while it was parked in our driveway..... Oh wait that was me in the Mini van. (This should be on confessions of a taxi cab driver)

15.)We hosted Thanksgiving here with three other families and a single guy. (props go out to cameron for an excellent Turkey and stuffing)

16.)Our computer completely quit working for a few days until we could buy a new one.

17.)And last but certainly not least I have finally convinced a family member of mine (besides my awesome mom who comes when I need her most) to come visit. I came in the form of torture I think ..... just kidding Allee moved up here to stay with us for a while and it has been a blast for us I hope she can soon say the same!

So there you all have it the update on why I have not been blogging! My life is crazy and certainly blog worthy but sheesh with out a camera or a computer how do you blog! I will not torture you all with a long post with all the pics you have missed but I will put up a slide show of the pictures we have not been able to post! Now I can finally catch up on all of you! By the way I think quite a few of you went to private over the past few months if you did and I missed the opportunity to be included please leave a comment with your email so I can send mine on to you! Heather I got yours today but Jeff and Tenille I know for sure I missed! Thanks guys!

Help!!!!

So for the past few days there has been a new word in our house to be heard round the world...........Ayudame (I hope I spelt that right). Okay so here is the story. I will be going about my usual day when suddenly Zoe yells out "Ayudame, Ayudame mommy"! I can not stop laughing. So now that she knows how to ask for help in spanish does that make her bilingual?

Success At Last.......

Well at least for him who shall remain nameless. For months now Mike has been intentionally trying to ruin our computer so that he can have an excuse to buy a new one. For those of you who think I am exagerating I can assure you that this is no lie. Alas he has finally begun to see success. Our computer has completed malfunctioned in both of our USB ports and we cannot seem to fix it. The result no pictures to blog about. I know I know you can go ahead and cry with me. I will see if I can convince him that without blogging I will have nothing to live for! Wish me luck! Hopefully we will soon have pictures to update you on our three week excursion to Utah.

ODE To A New Roof!

Alright so maybe you all are at the edge of your seats waiting to see what a new post will bring or maybe you are thinking this woman can make the longest posts but seriously I haven't had a boring week in a year!

We called our insurance to come and assess our roof for hail damage and wouldn't you know it they are giving us money to replace it and it wont effect our monthly rate. SWEET! Mike being the handy man that he is decided to do it himself so we could pocket the extra money. Luckily we have some great friends and missionaries here willing to help! It looks awesome! These guys have worked so hard they deserve some serious treats!

This is our friend Justin who was visitng his girlfriend (Maddy's mom Ali) and even though he was on vacation he still helped. Check out the cute out fit he had to wear!It has actually been a year exactly since we moved in. We have done some serious work on this house:

stripped wall paper

painted (literally every wall and ceiling)

installed baseboards and crown molding in every room

installed chair rail in the master

removed track lights on walls in three rooms

re wired five rooms

installed 9 new light fixtures (this includes cutting holes in the ceiling for them)

installed 8 new doors and frames (what a pain can I just say)

installed 3 ceiling fans

replaced all the upstairs bathroom fixtures and hung a mirror

removed a cabinet hung over the bar and patched the ceiling

replaced the refrigerator, dishwasher, washing machine and dryer

ripped out an outdated bathroom in the basement

cut out and installed an egress window

framed a storage room in the basement

replaced the old water heater for a much bigger and nicer one!

framed, sheetrocked, mudded, textured, wired, painted, carpeted and all those minor details a

brand new room in the basement!

Seriously I dont know how we were able to accomplish so much but some how we did! We couldn't have done it without great friends! Next stop probably the family room in the basement!

I will post the finished product of the roof in a bit!

Let it Snow Let it Snow Let it Snow!

Alright ladies and gents, we officially had our 3 weeks of fall and winter is here! We woke up this morning to it snowing. I can't believe that winter is already here I feel like I missed all the goodness of fall. If you need me for the next 7 months I will be in hibernation!On a much lighter note Little Isa has been trying to accomplish the whole pulling up thing. She can almost do it on her own but not quite. Here is a pic of this little ones adventures!This is the face Isa makes literally the whole time every time we have the missionaries over and she makes sure that they see it!

Newest pics of girls!!!

Okay so I finally decided to try the whole upload thing of the girls pics and though I still can't get it to work in a post it worked great if I put it on the side bar and heading so be sure to check them out (as if you could resist)!

Falling For Fall

Its autumn time its autumn time the leaves are falling down! Okay so Mike was outside doing a "little" clean up on the yard before the winter hits which could be any minute now. Anyway he decided he would "trim" my lilac BUSHES. Apparently Mike was thinking they should be trees because that is what they now look like. My poor lilac bushes have been destroyed. Oh well good thing they will grow back.

The girls had so much fun playing in the leaves as we cleaned them up. It was funny to watch Isa's reaction to the great outdoors. I guess this is one way to get this baby on the move to sit still becasue she did not want to move.

After the cleanup Zoe and Mike decided to reward themselves by getting some apples from our apple tree. This usually just means Mike shakes it until some fall down. Zoe for some reason loves these apples even though they are really sour!

Isa had seen Zoe eat the apple so she decided to give it a go unsuccessfully though she was so funny holding these apples and trying to get a good bite!

I bought mini pumpkins for Zoe and Maddy to paint and they had so much fun doing it!

Mike thinks its hilarious when Isa goes to crawl from her sitting position because she inevitably always does a side split. It is quite entertaining to watch her.

Last but not least Ms Zoe got a hair cut. I much needed one I might add. I have trimmed it about three times before but this time we went for the gold and chopped it. She was a little nervous at first but she did surprisingly well. So here she is about six inches later!

Congratualtions Baby Burke!!

No I am not announcing I am pregnant (nice try you wishful thinker you)! This is a shout out to Britt and Travis for having baby boy number four! Burke is the name he shall be known by but if you want any more info than that you will have to ask them for it! If I get a picture of this studdly dude soon I will post it for you guys! Congratulations guys we are so excited for you! PS hey Travis will you mail Mike some of what you have been drinking we would really like to figure out that boy thing for the next one?

Sleeping Dooty

We have all heard of Sleeping Beauty but how do you think Aurora would feel if she knew my child pronounced it "Sleeping Dooty". I personally could not stop laughing.

I say adventure is all "Relative"

So your saying this isn't lotion. Well at least glue is easy clean up!

The tomato soup was soooo good she decided to share it with everything she came in contact with!

On the crawl!

So in case the world wasn't lazy enough these days, Isa discovered a new way to play with this toy while laying down!

Gone fishing with Grandma Christian and Wendy

Some day I will get to take a nap until then I will just catch everyone else taking theirs.

So Zoe is in gymnastics and she has a blast. They usually set up a little circuit for the girls to do everytime and Zoe can hardly contain herself. She does a really mean somersault and almost has the backwards one down!

Look what Grandma brought!!!

Mikes family came to visit us for a week. This was a pretty exciting moment for me considering the only visitors we have had have been right after one of the girls were born so we were determined to make the most of it. We went to the Zoo, splashdown (waterpark), bowling, toward the base and Mike's job, did the whole mall thing, planet pizza (our equivelant of chucky cheese though I think ours is better) and played lots of games. It was so fun to have visitors! Thanks for coming to visit Halls and Dooses!

AHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!

That felt good! So this week has been so crazy I don't even want to go there but I will say this as soon as my husband returns from code change I am demanding a raise. I don't think I get paid enough for the shenanigans I dealt with today.

I am currently watching another little toddler evey day along with my two girls which has actually not been too bad but man these girls are just tornadoes. I am constantly going from one mess to the other (if I weren't OCD about a clean house it probably wouldn't make me crazy but tell that to my alter ego). The worst happened at about 4 pm. I was on the phone with some customer service dude for travelocity (who by the way only spoke arabic or something along those lines because I understood very little this man said so I was very frustrated)

In the background I can hear Zoe but nothing that she is doing is really registering. I had set these little glue bottles on the counter earlier when I gave the girls some craft stuff so they wouldn't play with them. Zoe had gotten ahold of them and thinking they were lotion just lathered her body. When I finally realize it I held all my frustration in (I should have thrown them away earlier) and just put her in the tub filled it with water and bubbles and then went to answer the door.

Enter Maddy's Grandma ready to pick her up. After chatting with her for a minute a birthday suit Zoe comes in to tell me she pooped in the potty (those who have potty trained know how exciting this is) So I ran in the bathroom with her to find a little poop in the toilet which is obviously not where it originated since I can see smeared poop all over the tub, toilet and floor. I immediately tell Lerri I need to go and she left me to clean up. I cleaned it all up removed toys to be disinfected showered Zoe and went off to make dinner.

While I made dinner Zoe had a peeing accident so we changed that. We ate tomato soup and grilled cheese (daddy's not home so we call this dinner right now) and Zoe spilt it the tomato soup all over herslef. So we cleaned that up. While I was cleaning up dinner the phone rang again so Zoe who was in the other room comes running in minus her clothing to hand me a phone with the whole roll of toilet paper wound around one hand with poop smeared all over it and herself. We immediately returned to the bathroom to find poop smeared all over the toilet again!
So thats how I ended up here. Seriously its days like these when I seriously consider going to work and making Mike be a stay at home dad. Mostly just becasue Misery loves company though!

To end I would just like to say "I have a dream that one day" Zoe will poop only int he potty!

The Next American Idol

I hope you are all ready for Zoe's debut we are still recording her first album but here is a little preview! PS these are just a few of the songs we sing every night before bed!

New Photos of the Girls!

Okay so we finally got some more pics done of the girls! I think they turned out pretty good considering everything that was going on that day! Unfortunately I have no Idea how to shrink the scanned file so I can put them on the blog. I am officially frustrated! Sorry folks I guess you only get to see the ones from Jen's studio!

Two Front Teeth!

Well it has finally happened. Isa officially has two front teeth. She looks so cute with her little teeth sticking out. She is always playing with them with her tongue. She is sooooo dang cute!

Too many babes in this bed!!!

When we were growing up I remeber this poem my mom used to tell us I believe it goes like this:

There are too many kids in this tub

Too many elbows to scrub

I just washed a behind

That I'm sure wasn't min

There are too many kids in this tub

It always made me laugh because it was soooooo true, we had 7 kids for 1 bathroom (which we never fought over while getting ready right Britt?!). We now have a similar situation in Zoe's bed. Here is the list of things she is currently insisting on taking to bed with her (These are really the names she has given them):

Baby

Baby Doll

Cabbage Patch

Dolphin

Swiper Airplane

Dora Pa-Pack

Ball

Cup

Red Blanky

Pink Blanky

This is not to mention the books she pulls into bed with her, her pillow, and her actual blankets that go on the bed! This kid cracks me up!

SLEEP AT LAST!!!!!

BEFORE.....

AFTER...

So we conquered the task of remodeling our bedroom! Woohoo!!!!! It looks awesome and I can't believe we did it all in 2 1/2 days. So here is the story to go with it. While we were remodeling we obviously couldn't sleep in there so Mike slept on the couch and I slept in the extra bed in Zoe's room. It was pretty ridiculous because I would sneak in after she went to sleep everytime so she wouldn't know I was there and this is why. I was so exhausted at this point from all the remodeling late nights that in the middle of the night Zoe woke up several times (as usual) and instead of me trying to get her back to sleep I shushed her. It went a little something like this: Zoe "ahhhhhhhhh mommy mommy ahhhhhhh", Me "shhhhhhhhhhh" , Zoe "ahhhhhhhh mommy mommy ahhhhhhhhhhh" , Me "shhhhhhhhhhhhhh" (thats where it all went wrong), Zoe "Get out mommy! Get out right now mommy! Get out!" I finally left and hung out in the kitchen in the dark at 4 in the morning for thirty minutes until she went back to sleep! AHHHHH! Well luckily I am back in my bed and the universe is once again at peace! Here are the pics of our room let me know what you think!