A little catch up

Yea...I'm playing catch up. What can I say except....I have 4 kids now (3 under the age of 4) and they don't leave much time for blogging. By the time they go to bed and I actually have some time to do something that doesn't require feeding or diapering I'm pretty pooped. We had Molly's blessing on HALLOWEEN of all days which is of course the best day to do something like this. I thought about dressing her in black and orange but decided it probably wasn't the best idea. One of the things I used to day dream about before I had a girl was the idea of my imaginary daughter wearing the blessing dress that I wore when I was a baby. My mother has kept it in mint condition for years and this year I actually got to put it to use.

Me and my sisters. First born....but last to have a girl. A few weeks later for Thanksgiving we made the trek to Alpine, UT to my parent's house (or the MANSION as we like to call it). It's over 5,000 square feet of pure fun for the grandkids complete with trampoline, sand volleyball court, pool table, 50's style diner, movie theatre size screen, and lots of space to run wild.

lots and lots of cousins to play with.... I didn't get many pictures for Thanksgiving for some reason but 7 of the 9 Cox kids were there which equaled about 23 grandkids all under one roof. POOR MOM! It was the usual pure chaos but.... a good kind of chaos. Saturday was the infmaous BYU-UTAH football game and there's no better way to watch it (besides in person) than on Dad's giant screen.

Not sure how Susi ended up with the best seat in the house. And Jane....c'mon a little BLUE at least? :)

Dad doing his best to send positive vibes their way. We won't talk about how things ended up that day :(. These guys didn't care....they had free reign of the chips, candy and soda! Of course on the day we were leaving, Utah decided to dump a good amount of snow that the kids would have loved to play in. BUMMER! Instead of playing in it we had to drive in it. Dad putting his toy to good use. Everyone had a great time. The usual madness insued but we had lots of laughs, minimal fighting (except maybe between Mark and Susi in the football game :)), and no barfing! The only bad part...the drive home which took 17 HOURS!!!! Yes, that's right....17 hours with 4 kids! Between the snow and the traffic out of Vegas I thought it was never going to end. Note to self: NEVER DRIVE ON THE SUNDAY AFTER THANKSGIVING! One of Luke's favorite things to say now is "It takes a long, long, long, long, long, long, time to get to Grandma Cox's house!"

I figured I'd end this post with this picture. Pretty sure it doesn't get much cuter than that!

Harry Potter, a fire fighter, and a UPS man

Even though we are now into the Christmas decorations in Costco phase of the calendar, I had to post some pics from our Halloween Festivities. We started off with a little pumpkin carving 101.

Dylan, who has previously had issues with the whole touching the gooey stuff...has since overcome that fear.

Each boy did a great job designing their own pumpkin face.

This was Molly's pumpkin :)Tryg was a little confused when he got all the goo out of his pumpkin and then looked into the now hollow abyss and said "where's my candy?" He had been carrying his plastic trick or treating pumpkin bucket thing around all day and was under the impression that all pumpkins are for the sole purpose of carrying candy and treats in them. He was a little disappointed to say the least! I think Luke won the prize of which jack o' lantern now looks most like it's owner?

The boys in their true crazy form....

All done! Unfortunately... a heat wave came in the next day and our pumpkins lasted about 2 days before they were shriveled up and coated in yucky black stuff. They didn't even make it to Halloween :(

Next up....Halloween and some trunk or treating! This year we had a Harry Potter, fireman, UPS man, and a hodge podge of a halloween decorated little girl.

Our Harry Potter. Dylan has read all 7 books (some of them more than once) and is a huge fan. I don't get it but have been roped into seeing the upcoming movie with him that I'm sure will be at least 3 hours long. Ughh! I love my smokey little fireman.

This one usually draws the most "oh how cute!" comments. Special thanks to Uncle Brandon and his UPS connections.

Molly's first halloween sporting her totally awesome leg warmers! We headed over to Grandma and Grandpa's TRUNK or TREAT extravaganza. This was quite the event with tons of yummy food, impressive carnival games, and way too much candy! Molly had a good time facing forward (a new milestone in her 9 weeks of life) checking out all the ghosts and goblins in mommy's kangaroo pouch as I like to call it.

This one's not ours. He belongs to Brandon and Melanie. I'm pretty sure this is not what he had in mind when his parents said they were going to the annual TRUNK or TREAT :)

Finally! Ready for some CANDY! The great thing about TRUNK or TREAT....tons of candy in a very small radius equals more bang for your buck! After a successful night of obtaining enough treats to last them at least until Christmas the boys hung out with their cousins and began to sort and trade their treats with eachother.

Luke - "Must eat more chocolate!" And..... a few hundred empty calories and a sugar rush later... HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

Summertime Favorites

This is just my random post of a few summertime favorite pics that I didn't want to go to waste...

No, she's not mine :). This is Gracie (our niece). I really liked this picture, her blue eyes and the angle it was taken at. Mark gets props for this one.

Tryg and Dad..

My boys :)

Love his eyes in this one...

Miss Molly J.

Our little Miss Molly J. just past her 1 month birthday this week. I can't believe it's already been 4 weeks since she joined our brewd of boys. So far she's survived the loud squeals, screaming, fighting, and wrestling that seem to fill our home most days...

And....I think they've decided to keep her.

Handy husband

With the anticipation of a new baby the NEED (or maybe my WANT) to do some switching around with regards to kids and bedrooms became more and more of a priority for me. I mean I guess if this was a girl I could have put three boys in one room but I was not liking that idea and really wanted to give Dylan his own space. Dylan is a lot like me and likes to have his "me" time and with 2 little monsters for brothers he was definitely lacking in that department. Not to mention, he's a bit older than Luke and it made more sense for Luke and Tryg to share a room. Our house technically has 3 bedrooms but fortunately lots of other space to work with.

We have this weird long room in the back that we think used to be a deck a previous owner enclosed. It has had multiple names in our house...MOM's GYM (since that's where I kept the treadmill and exercise equipment, the BOWLING ALLEY since it was all hard wood and rather long, or the simply OTHER or BACK ROOM. Here's some pics below of the room when we first bought the house.

It was a very awkward space with some weird cabinets, counter top and a sink. We could never figure out why this room would have a sink??? The kitchen actually had a window that looked out into this room and it included 2 rather ugly sliding glass doors...one from the office and one from our dining room. Very weird!!! And when we bought the house the room came complete with this hospital bed that you see in the picture. Also very strange!

So...I pictured making this room into two rooms...Dylan's new bedroom and another room that we'll call Mark's man room/kids play room. I know those two things don't really go together but I told Mark as long as the kids can play in there, store their toys, and watch movies on his flat screen TV then we can call it his MAN ROOM :).

I had gotten a couple estimates on having an outside company come in and transform the room but in the end we decided to put Mark's handy man skills to work with the help of his Dad and brother.

Phase 1 included mostly demolition.....

Making some progress...

working on the closet....

My deck became the staging/storage area for a while... It's starting to look like a bedroom!

I find it amazing that most men (not all...let's be clear) seem to just know how to do things like put walls up, hang doors, spackle ceilings, install ceiling fans, and do things with electrical wires. I don't get it but I do appreciate it! The boys finally got to help with some painting and Mark got to take a break as you can see.

Well...it only took a few months but it was pretty much finished before Molly came and that's what I asked for. Here are some pics of the finished product... It still needs a few finishing touches (door frame, baseboard,etc..). This area used to be a weird sliding glass door from our office. There were only a few frustrations along the way (and countless trips to home depot)

• having to put in 4 ceiling fans before he found one that worked right.
• realizing he bought the wrong door after he hung it up.
• finding out the closet he and his Dad built was a half inch too small for the closet door.
• trying to figure out why 2 out of the 3 outlets now did not work.
• wife nagging him to finish.

I love that Dylan has his own space now but I probably love even more that Mark was the one that gave it to him. I love having a husband that knows how to do this stuff....although he probably wishes he never made known his capabilities to me :) ! I guess after all his hard work he probably deserves that MAN room and once he gets his big flat screen TV up in there (probably in about 2015 or so)...I'll post some more pics :)