I'm feeling sorta... Wicked!

The Pantry House

Me and JoJo

Me and Javier Colon

Oh.my.goodness! First let me just say that I am so spoiled! My bestie Brooke called a couple months ago and asked if I wanted to go with her and some girls from her ward on a weekend trip to Cali to see Wicked! Well, after much "convincing", I decided to go! ;-) It was scheduled for the weekend after my birthday so it was the perfect excuse to give Ben! Happy Birthday to me!

We had so much fun! We left St. George Thursday morning and headed to LA where we would check into our super sweet hotel, get some dinner and then head over to Pentages to see the show! Wicked was a.ma.zing. It blew every expectation I had out of the water. Seriously. I still find myself thinking about it. I cannot wait to see it again! After the show we wondered around to the back to see if we could see any of the performers but we grew impatient and decided to grab some delicious Pink Berry instead! Yum!

Friday we slept in and then went and grabbed a delicious breakfast at a little diner called The Pantry House! They had huge portions and yummy yummy food! I LOVE places like that! We then headed over to the Fashion District where we shopped until we literally dropped! So fun! We actually just hit up Santee Alley because some locals told us that was the best place to shop. It was like a little Mexico! Lots of knock-offs, purses, make-up, shoes, toys... We did some pretty good shopping that day! It was lots of fun though. Later we met back at the hotel so we could grab some dinner and then head over to a tree lighting event they were having at our hotel. While we were in the elevator one of the girls asked this guy if he was a singer because he was carrying a guitar... I looked up and it was Javier Colon from The Voice! Ahhh! He was so nice and took pictures with all of us! He was actually staying in our hotel and was performing at the tree lighting! So fun! That night we went to dinner and then over the tree lighting which was so fun! Then later we were getting ready to go to one of the other girls room when we saw JoJo! No one knew who she was except for me but it was still so fun to stop and get a picture with her. Don't mind me in the picture. I look special. I was just so excited!

Saturday we got up and headed back to Santee Alley to get some last minute deals. Then we hit up a sweet fabric store that Brooke had heard about! Then last but not least we headed to Ikea where we spent literally 4 hours at!! Ah! We did not leave LA until like 5 pm. We had so much fun though and I made some great new friends!

A huge shout out to "brown" grandma for watching the kiddos for me while I went! Thank you!!! The kids just love having you so close and so do we! Thanks to Ben for letting me go too! He is such a great husband and dad! And thanks to Brooke for the invite and for the great friendships I made while on that trip!

Benson's Bday party

I swear I threw this party back in September for his actual birthday! I'm just a little behind in the blogging department! I wasn't sure if I was even going to throw him a party but I came across this blog and basically copied ev.er.y.thing about it! (I'm good at that!) Besides, it made it so easy! The boys had a blast! I made them robes. For lunch they had galactic pizza and yoda sodas! They played pin the light saber on Darth Vader, keep the balloon off the ground with light sabers and they went on a "mission" to find their goodie bags! They also had quite the fight when Darth Vader himself showed up!!

To finish the party off, we had cupcakes that were lined up to look like a light saber!

The boys had a blast!

We are so blessed to live in this fun, close knit neighborhood! Every single friend he invited has or does live here and will be a life long friend!
I also hold a special place in my heart for all of these cute "little" boys!

Check check...anyone out there?

Sadie was blessed on September 3rd, 2011.
We did our traditional Saturday blessing at my parents ward building. It is so nice to be able to do our own thing! We don't have to worry about the circle being too big or being on time... haha. Anyway, we had a great day. The guys that were in the circle were:
Ben, Grandpa Joe, Grandpa Wade, Great Grandpa Bradshaw, Great Grandpa Swensen, Great Grandpa Meier, Kirk, Uncle Spencer, Uncle Levi, and Great Uncle Craig.

We had a nice luncheon afterwards with some yummy chicken salad sandwiches, chips, fruit and some mini cup cakes. Thank you thank you to all those that helped and are always so willing to lend a hand. Thanks to my mom for being a rock star like always and making things happen!! :-)

On a side note, Miss Sadie Lou is actually named after Ben's grandpas mom. So his great grandma. After the blessing, his grandpa was so sweet and shared some of her history with us. Here are just a few things that I wanted to jot down for journaling purposes.

Her full name was Sadie Peay Meier and she was born on July 15th, 1898 in Kentucky. She was born in July like our Sadie and also had an older brother and an older sister. In 1925, Sadie and her husband Rob attended there first sacrament and were later baptized members of the church of Jesus Christ of latter day saints.
Then in October of 1943, they moved their family of 6 kids to Utah!
We are so proud that we could name her after such an amazing woman. The stories of her are always of service and kindness.

Happy Halloween

We had a fun Halloween this year! My mom came down so she could be with us and see the kids! We did our traditional "dinner in a pumpkin" which was so good! Next year though, we decided we'll do that the night before Halloween and pizza the night of! Ha!
Benson was Darth Vader, Hiley was a cheerleader and Miss Sadie was a little witch! We went around out little neighborhood and got loads of treats.
I'm pretty sure this is Hiley's favorite holiday! :-)

Sadie's Photo Shoot

Let me tell you about this little beautie! I love her... we love her! She has been so much fun! It's funny though. You think with your 3rd that you know everything there is to know. Hmmm. I was wrong. She has/had thrush. My other two didn't. What. a. pain! I've also had some nursing issues which have also never come up before. Ugh. Sadie also likes to spit up. A lot! Oh and cry... Every night. At 8 p.m. Without fail. This too is also new to me. What the?? People who have babies with colic.... I don't know how you do it. Seriously. I give you mad props!

I, however know that I am so blessed to have a happy, healthy baby.

She has started to smile which melts my heart. She has the "Bradshaw" mouth. Long upper lip, tiny bottom one. She reminds me of my grandma. I'm sure she had her hand it that! ;-) Sometimes I think about how much she would love this baby and how she would have loved to hold her! But then I remember how she does and did. My grandma loved and held her before I did! How sweet is that knowledge?

Sadie is so lucky! She has so many people in her life that love her so much!

Anyway, she weighed in at a "whopping" 10lbs 11oz at her two month appt. last week! She is growing just like she should. She also had her first set of shots! (which do not get easier with each child, I might add!)! She is doing great and is so stinkin' cute! Now if I could just stay caught up on laundry! Man, who knew such a tiny little thing could produce sooooo much laundry! ;-)

Ok click HERE for a link for my photographer. She is a.ma.zing!

Click HERE for the headband info too! My friend Heather makes them and they are so cute!

Children of the Corn

(please ignore the orphan-like state of my children.)

Here's the story:

At the end of last school year, Benson went on a field trip to Staheli Farms. It's a pretty cool farm here in town. Anyway, while there, they received some seeds. I had no idea what they were or anything about them really. Well, I had to work the night that he got them but when Ben got home, he told Benson they could plant one. So off they went to the back yard where Ben tore a hole in the weed mat and literally pushed the seed into the ground... That's it.
He did this just to appease Benson.

Fast forward 4 months and what do we have??
One single corn stock. We couldn't believe it! Benson was so proud of his corn. I wasn't convinced however. I totally thought it was a big weed. Nope. It was totally corn. It has, to our disappointment died, but not before producing 2 tiny ears of corn. How fun!

One day, when we have a place of our own, I would love to have a garden!

Benson

Let's just say I had a hard time with this. A really hard time. Anyone can tell you I'm not the most emotional person there is. I bawled... like a baby. The day before I mentioned to Benson that when I got ready to go to school, my dad always gave me a blessing. I sorta just mentioned it in passing. As soon as Ben got home from meetings that morning Benson said, "Dad, will you give me a blessing so that I can go to school?" I was so proud of him. Anyway, that night during the blessing I couldn't hold back the tears. (I must still have some pregnancy hormones! ;-) ) Ben gave him such a sweet blessing. Of course Hiley wanted too. She is usually very squirmy and ADD but she sat there so quiet with her arms folded like she was taking in everything her dad was saying. It was awesome. Benson kept telling me not to be sad that he wasn't scared and that I would be with Hiley and Sadie. So funny! I told him they were happy tears but he didn't seem to buy it! Anyway, I did really good the next day... up until the bus pulled away! I decided that I didn't like this job of being a mom anymore and I hated the idea of having to let my boy go into this BIG BAD world of ours. I just hope and pray every day that we have done the best we could with teaching him everything that the schools do not. I really do like this job by the way, just not the hard stuff... like letting them grow up!!

Some of Benson's favorites right now:

Color: red
Food: pizza
Treat: cookies
Movie: Star Wars
Best Friend: Tryston
Thing to do: play with friends and play the Wii