Manly Man

I'm sure most of us wives have AT LEAST heard of Halo 3. Well Jason was playing online last night for a while and all the sudden I hear him say "Okay guys I'm out". I'm thinking, it's still pretty early. I wonder why he's stopping already. So I told him "Go ahead and keep playing." I had just curled up with the latest US Weekly. I would be entertained for at least a good 1/2 hour. His response: "I want to have some time to KNIT"!!!!! Can you believe that. My manly man of a husband quit playing Halo 3 so that he could have time to knit!!! I started cracking up!!! I could not believe it. Sure enough, he sat beside me, got his needles and yarn and went to work. He's actually pretty good at it :)

He said he's knitting a scarf for the girls :) Lucky things!! I love my manly man!!!

Shake On It

Jason: "Taylor, what do you want Santa to bring you for Christmas?"
Taylor: "The Princess Wii Game"
Jason: "That sounds great! Maybe we should write Santa a letter today to tell him everything you want."
Taylor: "I want the Princess Wii Game. Shake On it!"

They proceeded to "shake on it", as if that seals the deal, after which Taylor introduces herself to her dad. "Hi, my name's Taylor."

We both lost it! She's too funny.

Birthdays and Halloween - Young Style

First of all, I'm feeling MUCH better. I'm not actually sure what I had, but boy it sure had a hold on me for almost an entire week. YUCK!!! Anyways, thanks so much for all the well wishes and suggestions on things to help me feel better. I have the greatest friends!!

Okay, back to playing catch up on the blog.

October 29th was Jason's 30th Birthday. He had a VERY memorable birthday :). We celebrated by going to a Bounce House for a three year old's birthday. The boy is one of Jason's favorites so he's happy to share the day with him. However I don't think the bounce house is how he wanted to celebrate his own big day. Don't let him fool you though, he had a BLAST!! At one point I had to take Rilee to the bathroom and came back to no husband. After searching the groups of adults with no luck I hear him yelling through an obstacle course. TOO FUN!!

Once we were finished with cake and ice cream at the bounce house we headed to my folks for an early thanksgiving dinner with my sister, nephew and niece. Jessica left on her mission the next morning, so she wanted to have some of mom's famous stuffing before she was off to Argentina for the next year and a half. Taylor was having some asthma issues so Jason decided that she needed to lay off the sugar for the night. This meant no cake for her....meaning no cake for us either. I had made Jason his favorite cake for dessert and he couldn't even have anything for fear that Taylor would freak out. What a good dad to give up his birthday cake!

We finally did something to celebrate though. A few couples joined us for a couples only dinner at Claim Jumper. We had a blast!! We seriously have some of the best friends around!!!

The Ore Cart
The Hewlett's
The Mollenhauer's
The Perkes
The Birthday Boy and Me Yes, Please!

Now on to Halloween. When Jason gets an idea, I mean a really good idea, he runs wild with it. Well this Halloween he had one of those ideas. It was a sort of progressive dinner idea with a Toddler Halloween party. Thus was born "Tuxedo Toddler Bash" where 17 kids and their parents turn out for an evening of fun!!

We had 5 apartments here in the complex that hosted one or two activities. We all started here with a cake walk and pictures. Jason set up a Halloween backdrop and everything. They all turned out super cute. After our house we split up into two groups. One went to a house where you could paint pumpkins and the other went to a home where there was a "who could mummify your parent the fastest?" and a "candy corn relay". After switching homes after about 20 min we all trick-o-treated our way to the next two homes. One in which a "scary" story was being told that taught the kids to NEVER sneak out of the house. The other house had the traditional fishing game in which they all caught these darling treat bags. They also had the "eat the dough nut off the string" game.






Can you imagine what a blast that was for these little kids!! The parents had lots of fun too. I was so impressed with how well this party turned out.


The kids were so cute all dressed up and even some of the parents joined in!! Jason and I were Bella and Edward from the Twilight series. I got off easy with flannel p.j.'s (she spends lots of time in these in the books) and Jason was in jeans and a button down shirt, face painted white and fangs. TOO FUNNY!!


Anyways, we have had a blast since Jason has been home from his trips!! I think we are finally recovered and ready to rock and roll on Jason next idea...THE CLINIC!!!


Mandy

Sick-O

Any suggestions for cures to the flu which has progressed to strep throat? I'm loving life right now, can you tell?

Mandy

WINNER!!!

He did it!!! Jason won the scrapbooking layout challenge and I couldn't be more happy with the prizes :) So fun!!! I can't wait to do/for him to do, the next one...Nicknames. He's already promised a blog on it, and I'm still pushing for a page on it as well. We'll see :)

Anyways, Congrats Mr. Jason!

Mandy

Where do I live?

Here's Jason's pages in answering the question: Where Do You Live?

You can see he did the google maps to get the exact location of Tuxedo Park on one page and Portland OR on the other. The journaling choked me up a bit when he read it to me. Love my man:)

Tiff, thanks so much for the challenge. Winner or not, we had fun putting this together and can't wait for the next one :)

Jason Jamaal Young

I have tried to ignore the feeling that I have had about needing to blog about this particular man. See we have a super busy day tomorrow, and I have 14 cards I have to make for this card swap that will take place on Thursday evening. So I really don't have time to be sitting here at the computer right now. But I just can't pass up this opportunity to tell you all what a wonderful man I married.

A friend of mine, Tiffany (you can find her blog to the right under The Hewlett's), has posted this contest to do a scrapbook page on a different subject, that she will pull from "The Journal Jar", each week. She will pick a winner at midnight each Tuesday and the winner will get some SUPER scrapbooking supplies. Well, being that I am a beginner scrapbooker, I got kinda alot pumped when I saw all the prizes and wanted EVERYTHING instantly. The only problem is that I'm not really very creative. Give me an idea and I'll run with it, but ask me to come up with something on my own, and I struggle. Jason, however, does not have this problem. He has made up some of the best scrapbooking pages that we have in our book....YES, you read right...he scrapbooks with me.

Anyways, after showing him how cool this prize was, I asked him to be my "secret weapon". I would keep his identity a secret and not tell any of my lady friends that he "helped" me. I guess I'm not doing so well on that part. :) He agreed and has totally taken over the project, with no complaints from me. He's just so creative, computer geeky, and patient, that the pages are turning out great. There's no way that I would ever take credit for them.

See, he has Part 4 of the National Boards on Friday and Saturday. This is the last and final big test that he has before being licensed to practice Chiropractic in the state of Oregon. If/when he passes these boards, he will be a Real Life Chiropractor. How exciting is that?!?! Well you would think that it would be so exciting that he would study...study...study for them. But no, he's been working on this scrapbooking project all day...takes a break to eat dinner...back to work...takes a break to go to a review session...back to work...and is now over at the Johnston's studying again...only to come home and finish the scrapbooking pages by midnight.

Sometimes I feel bad because I know that if I didn't REALLY want to WIN EVERY contest that Tiffany will put up, I know that he would be able to study and relax a bit. But secretly, I think he REALLY likes scrapbooking :)

I love this picture. This is in our very fist apartment (if you could call it that). Some friends were coming over and we had a list of things to get done before they showed up...not the least of which was feeding baby taylor. So here he is...being superman....feeding taylor and vacuuming at the same time. I just had to capture the moment :)

P.S. we never heard from GAP. guess we didn't win. better luck next time.

P.P.S. You can see the finished pages here sometime before midnight...hopefully.