Ryan vs. Velociraptors

What do Ryan and Velociraptors have in common?

They can both open doors. >:-(

Michael Jackson vs. Mr. Bean

I know this is supposed to be a blog about us, but I just couldn't pass up posting this. It's short, and it's funny. The way all good internet videos should be. Enjoy!

Long over due pictures

The kids loved camping this summer and Maddie is so upset that she now has to wait all the way until next summer to go again. She says that's FOREVER.


Celebrating birthdays at Grandma's! This summer Maddie turned 5 and Ryan turned 2.

Ryan does his "big cheese" for every picture now!
Riding the Train and Lagoon. Ryan loves trains and this was one of the highlights of his summer.




Don't ask me why the the vacuum is one of his most favorite things. He begs me to pull it out all the time.
Ryan's grumpy face. He does this face all the time too because he loves the laughs he gets from it.

Maddie's Easter dress. That smile is because she absolutely loves getting all pretty'd up.

Shower Surprise

I go to the gym every day before work. Most of the time I shower at the gym as well. Some days I shower at work. Today I showered at work. Today there was poop in the shower at work. Poop. Human poop. Who would do such a thing? A jerk, that's who. Luckily, there are two showers at work, and the other one was poop free. Because I'm such a nice person, I did not take any photos of this to share with you. But I really wanted to.

Toy Story 3 Trailer!

It's here! The official theatrical trailer for Toy Story 3 leaked onto YouTube recently, but it may not supposed to be there, so you better watch this before it gets pulled. Is anyone else as excited for Toy Story 3 as I am? (Hit the full screen button. You'll enjoy it more.)

Update: Looks like they've pulled it, so if the video below doesn't work, the folks at SlashFilm have archived it, so go to this link to watch it.

Maddie names

For Maddie's birthday she got these dogs that came with a Barbie. She loves it and she chose to name them.

Brown-ish, White-ish, Skinny-ish, and Pretty-ish.

Disneyland

So, here are some Disneyland pics.
We had a blast in California, and Ryan had such a fun time with the Steinickes that he didn't want to come home with us. I think he really loved having some buddies to play with all week and so when we got back and came to pick him up he told us to "Go Away." Haha.

Maddie was really excited to take a ride in an airplane.
Her favorite ride at Disneyland was the Matterhorn. (this was the only big ride that she was tall enough for, so she rode it about 5 times while we were there)
She loved Sea World and says that she wants to be a trainer now. (I don't know if it was more because of the shows she saw or simply because she saw a barbie trainer that she picked out to be her souvenir.)

My mom made an appointment for Maddie and I to go to Ariel's Grotto which was a fancy lunch where the princesses came around to our table and had a picture with maddie and talked to her for a minute. She thought this was the coolest thing ever and sat thru the whole lunch with the biggest grin on her face. So, some of the pictures are from that day. Thanks Mom!

ENJOY!
I also had to include in this post a list of "maddie one liners" we call them. She said so many funny things on our vacation that I tried to keep a list of them in my phone or books so that I could write them down when I got home. And therefore, i put them here so that i can remember them forever. (so no need to really read on, the next set is just for me) sorry there are a lot.

- In the airplane over SLC, just after we took off, maddie says, "I can see the beach already." (haha, the great salt lake)

- In the airport, we went for a walk and way before we pasted the Cinnabun she could smell it and said, "I want some of that yummy smell." I didn't want to worry about it and told her that she may not like it because that smell could be spinach or something. She said no it's... (a little pause and thinking) ... it's cinnamon. I guess she's smarter than I thought. And of course, after telling grandpa that she wanted some of that yummy smell. She got her Cinnamon roll. Thanks Dad!

- Landing in Long Beach, CA maddie says, "I thought the airplane was going to take us some place different." (all airport runways look the same to her, i guess. we laughed our heads off though)

- Over the clouds in the sky she says, "It kind of looks like we're in Heaven."

- "knock, knock
who's there
boo
boo who?
don't cry, we're going to disneyland"

- Oh the matterhorn! That's my favorite!

- After we rode Thunder Mountain and she was told that she was too short to ride. she said "What about lightning mountain?"

- Raise your hand if you're almost five

- Raise your hand if you've met cinderella

- Dad, i lost my earsight.

- (She had sticky hands from her lollipop and she was sticking her fingers together and showing everyone that they would not come apart. Then I told her that I was going to clean her hands now.) She says "Mom, don't take away my magic yet"

- It's a boom mic (They say this on the movie BOLT. She walked into the Talking with Crush room and saw the front of the room had a screen with a picture of an undersea background with a michrophone in the top corner of the screen. This was supposed to represent a way to communicate with Crush underwater. She thought it was a boom mic sticking into the shot when it wasn't suppose to be there. It's really so much funnier if you've seen Bolt and the scene where they are in the video editing room checking out the movie they just shot.)

- Maddie: Mom, can i ask tigger a question? Mom: sure what are you going to ask him. Maddie: i want to ask him if he would like to come and chase the birds with me.

- is there more than one beach? can you take me to our beach?

- Landing: are they going to cut the engines?

- I'm not afraid of anything

- Maddie: Why does that abominable snowman keep growling? Dad: Cause it's his mountain and everyone is sledding thru it. Maddie: It's his?

- Maddie: Are you thinking what i'm thinking? Mom: No Maddie: I'm thinking we need some cotton candy. (She also did the same thing the next day, but this time with popcorn)

- She sang all the time we were there. Her own little ariel songs and whatever. I think we got some pretty interesting looks in line for rides.

- you wanna know what my favorite ride is? (Yelling) The Matterhorn!!! All week long we called it the Maddie-horn, until we said it so much that Maddie got sick of it and kept telling us to stop.

Quiznos Optional Pricing

Sorry, just a quick rant here. I went to Quiznos the other night to pick up a couple sandwhiches for Dixie and I for dinner. After ordering our two sandwhiches (exactly the same sandwhich), I was at the counter checking out. The girl had my credit card in hand, and asked, "Did you want the buy two get one for a dollar?" I didn't quite hear her, so I asked her to repeat herself. She said it again, "Did you want the buy two get one for a dollar?". I said no, just the two sandwhiches is fine. Then AFTER she had run my credit card, and I was done paying, I see a sign on the window that says, "Buy ONE get one for a dollar." So I said, "Oh, did you mean, buy ONE, get one for a dollar?" She said, yeah, that's what I said.

While I'm pretty darn sure she said TWO, not ONE, it doesn't really matter does it? If I'm buying two sandwhiches, and there is a deal going on where one of them should only cost me a dollar, do you really need to ask me? Perhaps she is used to people coming in who are averse to saving money. Maybe there's a pandemic of Chrematophobia going around that I don't know about, and there are tons of people running around trying to get rid of all their money. That's like asking me, would you like to pay more money, or less money for this food? OF COURSE I WANT THE SALE PRICE! Do you really have to ask?

Quiznos, I want my $7 dollars back.

BTW, I know I've surpassed my deadline on more Disneyland photos. That's because I've been spending every waking moment sorting through them and finding the aboslute BEST photos for your enjoyment. As soon as I have wittled them down to the top 500, I'll post them ASAP.

Rest in peace, MJ

Michael Jackson has officially gone from "freak" to Legend.

Oh, and I realize we still have not posted anymore photos from our Disneyland trip. I will get some up before the weekend is over, I promise!

First pics from Disneyland

Hey, thought I'd post a few shots from our vacation so far. Maddie is having a blast, and keeping us all on our toes. We're trying to document all the cute things she's saying, but at the moment, I can't seem to think of any. But here are a few pics. The airport, her first airplane ride, Universal Studios yesterday, and then a few shots from Disneyland today.

And the below video is just for the Packers and Greens. It's not an exact representation, but it's the best we could do. Enjoy!

EXAMPLES

Here are the examples from our primary activity. These layouts are just to give you an idea. Your children can put them together however they'd like. If you click on a picture below you can see it larger.





Sorry other bloggers..... i have this here for my ward to view for those who couldn't make it to our primary activity. all other readers can just ignore it. thanks!

Aftermath

Ok, here's a shot of our computer room after all the cleaning was done. You can't see them, but off to the left there's a set of shelves we put in that saved a lot of great space. Man, you should have seen this place before.

HEADLINE: Layton home contains secret room

I think the value on our house just went up a bit this weekend. We recently discovered an extra room! Must have been hidden there by the original owners, because I don't remember it being there when we moved in. I always thought that this "space" in the house was just a big pile of rubbish, a dumping ground if you will, where we can stash stuff we don't ever want to see again. Turns out though, that there was an actual 4th room in that very spot, right underneath our noses, hiding there, the whole time!

But seriously, we had about 5 hours on Saturday with absolutely no kids, (thanks to Debbie for taking them with her to Orem) so we decided to tackle the beast that was our office. We forgot to take a picture of it before, plus Dixie said she wouldn't have let me post it anyway, so I found a picture that could be comparable to what we were dealing with before hand.

This may not be a perfect representation, but it gives you an idea of the space there was for moving around in there. Not much. Take a look at all the messy offices at this link, and you'll see a fair amount of pictures that were similar to how ours was before the CDC and the HAZMAT teams came through. The "after" picture will follow shortly, as soon as FEMA has finished doing their analysis.

Disclaimer: For Dixie's sake, please let it be known that this is not a fair representation of the rest of our house. The rest of our house is spotless, all the time, and never EVER gets messy. Ever.

May the Fourth be with you

Happy Star Wars day everyone!

SMARTIES

I had the funniest conversation with Maddie yesterday (well, she always has something funny to say)... but I wanted to write this one down so I didn't forget it.

We sat down for breakfast, and I fed her fish.
MOM: Your fish is not eating her food lately. Maybe she'll die some day soon.
MADDIE: No, mom, my fish will never die.
MOM: Yes, Maddie, your fish will die one day.
MADDIE: No she wont.
MOM: Maddie, all fish die some day.
MADDIE: Not mine.
MOM: I have a video on the computer that I can show you of a little girl who had a funeral for her fish just before she flushed it down the toilet. (here, you can watch it if you want, it's hilarious)
MADDIE: Well, mom.... computer fish and tv fish die, but mine will never die.
MOM: That video is a recording of a real fish that died. So all fish will die some day.
MADDIE: No! She wont!

I decided that I was done and that I didn't really care if I won this argument or not. So I let it go.
THEN......
Later that afternoon, the kids were picking a treat from their Easter baskets, and both decided to go with SMARTIES.

MADDIE: I'm going to have smarties because I need to be smarter.
MOM: Really?
MADDIE: Ya, Holly told me that there's the word Smart in Smarties, so if you eat them, then you'll be smarter.
MOM: Did you know that Holly was just joking. Smarties don't really make you smarter.
MADDIE: Yes, they do.
MOM: No, she was just being silly.
MADDIE: They really do mom! Do you wanna see?
maddie put a few in her mouth and chomped, when her mouth was clear....
MADDIE: See.... you're right mom! My fish will die some day. See, smarties made me smarter.

LOL, I just laughed my head off.

Ryan Hehehehehehehe

So for a long time now, Ryan has had this way of expressing his excitement, or really, just for expressing what he wants. If you ask him a question, and the answer is yes, he will make this noise. Sometimes it will be accompanied by a nod of the head, and the word "yes", but sometimes not. We get a kick out of it, and thought you all might too. Enjoy.

Image Tag

I noticed on Nat and Clint's blog that they had an image tag going. Clint noted that he's not tagging anyone, so I'm taking the initiative to join in. I usually don't join in on this stuff, but I thought, I'll see which picture pops up, and if it's a good one, I'll do it, if not, I won't. Well it doesn't get any better than Maddie riding a llama. Here are the instructions as posted on Clint's post:

1. Go to your documents/pictures folder.
2. Go to your sixth file.
3. Choose your sixth picture.
4. Blog about it.

Just so you know, I'm blogging this from my work laptop. (Hopefully my boss doesn't read this). So the pictures folder I was going through was only the pictures I have on my work laptop. This picture comes from a day when we went as a family to a co-worker's farewell party up at his home/ranch in Morgan. He was going to Afghanistan (incidentally, his one year is up, and he is coming back in a couple weeks), and invited everyone up for a party before he left. He owns a small bit of land and on it raises a few animals including a few llamas, some goats, a wild burro, and who knows what else. So anyway, he had all of us with kids go out into the field, and corral all the llamas into the pen so the kids could ride them. At first Maddie was on the ground with me guiding her, but she felt more comfortable being held, so I put her on my shoulders, and we were swinging our arms and running around the place trying to keep the llamas from getting away. They would come charging straight for us, and I would just stand my ground, which got Maddie really excited, and she was laughing her head off. Then they got a chance to lead all the llama's around by a rope, and ride them and what not. So this is a shot of Maddie riding "princess". The other llama had some serious tooth/jawbone decay problem, and had a big hole in the side of it's cheek. I don't think Maddie was too fond of that one.

5. Tag six people. I'm with Clint this one, I'm a bit lazy, and I don't really know 6 people to tag. So I'll just tag Dixie and let her do one.

Dad, can you hear me?

The other day, Maddie was playing with Dixie's cell phone, and was calling my cell phone over and over again. Most of the time I would pick up and talk to her, but this time I decided to let the voice mail get it and see if she would leave me a message. Well she did. And it's too cute not to share with you. I was able to get it off my cell phone onto the PC, but it's a bit quiet, so you'll have to turn up the volume to hear it well.

Mandles

I decided that DQ post was lame, something needed to replace it, so you're going to learn about Mandles. Go buy one. This is hilarious.

DQ Rocks

I'm doing this because I LOOOOOVE free food. Here we go. According to this blog post, I can get some free DQ food if I make a deal with them. Well I'll tell ya what I'd do to try their sweet deals for free. I would run to the nearest DQ and back for a week straight, that's what I'd do. (To burn off all the calories from the sweet deals I'm getting.)

Wii Bowling High Score

Sorry, I had to brag about my new Wii bowling high score. Don't get me wrong, I don't spend a lot of time doing this, this was just a lucky game. One pin away from a perfect game!

Me and My Big Sister

Ryan is always trying to do just what his big sister is and as of lately he is following her every move.... even if it means dancing like a princess dressed in a blanket dress.

Guessing Game

So we're at dinner, and thinking of going to the library tonight for FHE. But we're also trying to get Maddie to eat her dinner. So I tell her that we're going somewhere fun tonight, but I can't tell her what it is, because it's a surprise. So I tell her that for every two bites of her dinner she eats, I'll give her one clue.

So she takes two bites, and the first clue is... It's very quiet there.
She doesn't guess.
Two more bites... You need a card to go there.
Still can't guess.
Two more bites... You get to bring things home from there.
Still can't guess.
Two more bites... There are lots of stories there.
Still can't guess.
Two more bites... It's closed on Presidents day.
"The Library!"

Funny thing is, just last President's day, we tried to go to the Library, forgetting it was closed. So did she actually remember that and figure it out?

No Time to Blog.... but pictures are here!

I've been too busy lately to find time to blog.... plus the time i've spent on the computer lately has been trying to catch up on reading everyone else's blogs. BUT, i thought i'd put a few pictures up.
These are the same ones that are on facebook, so they are not new to those of you who saw them on facebook.

Love it!

I've decided that I LOVE Google more and more everyday! Google calendar, Google Reader, and Google Docs!
However, I have discovered that google reader cannot get feeds from private blogs, just like the blog list cannot. It's been something that's been driving me crazy. So.... All you that have gone private.... i never see if you've posted something new! so sorry, i guess you'll have to send me an email if you want me to look at it. yes, i know, i'm a lazy blogger. oh well, what can you do. ;)

sorry, this is a random post, because i was just testing things out.