a picture-story about my double chin

A few weeks ago, it was Sunday evening and we were just kind of lounging around in a somewhat cluttered home. Tyler wanted to take pictures (not an uncommon request) so Kenny was helping him hold the camera so he could start snapping. He really is so cute to watch take pictures. Brynlee and I happened to be across from them on the opposite couch, so we were the lucky subjects.

At first I ignored them...

Then I pretended like I was asleep in hopes they would choose something else to take a picture of.

But they didn't stop, so instead I started being a weirdo for the camera, to keep it interesting, you know...

Then I gave them some good ol-fashioned smiles...

After several shots (way more then I'm showing you) Kenny takes the camera from Tyler who is no longer interested and keeps taking pictures. Then he says to me, "maybe you should try pushing your tongue up to the top of your mouth or something." I have no idea what any of these pics look like at this point, we're just messing around. But I realize he's talking about my double chin that has probably become the dominant feature in all of these pictures.

Was I offended?

No. instead I started busting up laughing.

I couldn't stop laughing...

For a long time...

Then I tried to stretch my neck as long as it would go to get rid of it...

Then I told him to kiss this...haha

I still have a double chin, but I've realized that it's something that's a part of me (an unfortunately large part of me). Of course it's worse now, but even back when I was really skinny, I still had one. So I say whatever! Long live my double chin!!

stuff in my life

--Yesterday morning I went to the fridge and found tyler's rain boot. It was just sitting there in between the milk and grapes.

--Kenny had been kind enough to clean the bathroom two Saturdays in a row. Last Saturday I got sick of it not ever being fully-cleaned, even though I did appreciate his efforts, he never did the floor or the mirror. So I cleaned it all and then brought him in to show him. I said, "See this? this is what a clean bathroom looks like." without missing a beat he pulls his pants down, moons me and says, "See this? this is what a clean bum looks like!" hahaha

--Brynlee turned 9 months old on Nov. 9th! She walks along all the furniture still and sticks everything in her mouth. The other day she started choking on a piece of dried cement that she had taken from the fireplace. Yuck!

--Yesterday at the doctor's office Tyler was being crazy! The nurse comes in to see him climbing and flipping all over the bench. The nurse asked, "what are you doing?"
Ty: I'm just doing some tricks.
Nurse: You're pretty wild!
Ty: I'm not wild! I'm just a boy!!

I left Kenny some love on our bed...



Chocolate is, after all, one of the best kinds of love. some are caramel-filled, others mint truffle kisses.

Last night we had the missionaries over for dinner again, which means we had dessert. I let Brynlee share my brownies and ice cream (her first time for both, I believe) and she loved it so much!! She would smack her lips so loud until I gave her another bite. She even started crying when it was gone. I knew just how she felt. :)

Tyler loves to sit at the piano and pound away singing, usually it's "I Am A Child of God" (he knows every word, just not every note haha). Lately he has to bring his plastic ice-cream cone (from playing kitchen) and he pretends it's a pipe. He pretends to smoke it, and taps it on the hymn book with one hand like he's figuring out the notes, and playing with the other. He calls it "playing 101 dalmations". I just about died laughing when I realized what he was talking about. I remembered that part in the movie where Roger's playing the piano and writing music.

Next to snuggling, this is Bryn's favorite position. She will just throw herself over your leg and assume you will hold onto her ankles. She looks up at you through the hole created by your leg and thinks it's so funny.

In-laws in-town

We had a great week! This past Tuesday I attended, and was honored to speak at, our ward's Young Women In Excellence. It went really well. There was a yummy dinner and the girls all did a great job of putting it all together. I was glad to be a part of it.

Wed. was Veteran's Day, but we didn't really have anything out of the ordinary day.

Friday we had a visiting teaching luncheon thing. My comp. and I decided to get all 3 ladies done at once and we had a big lunch together and it was awesome. Terra did all the work and the food was delicious. I love getting to know the sisters here better. I learn so much from all of them.

I left from that and immediately went to the airport to pick up Kenny's parents (and Kenny met us at the airport too). From there we drove to Nauvoo, IL because that's what they wanted to see. We were grateful for an excuse to go back there. We loved it. Fri. night we stayed in a hotel in Keokuk, which was probably Tyler's favorite part becuase of the hotel's swimming pool. I forgot his floaties and I don't think he cared, but we did. He didn't really get it and thought he could just swim around and jump in hundreds of times without us catching him. We had one scary experience, but he lived through it all. He's pretty fearless in the water. Saturday we pretty much had Nauvoo to ourselves. It was my first time going not in the summer, and it was pretty empty. It was nice. We even got to stop at Carthage jail before coming back home. I was reminded of how amazing our pioneer ancestors are and the sacrifices they made. what incredible examples.
We spent Sunday with Scott and Carolyn too, and then they left Mon. morning. so it was a short trip but we had lots of fun with them. Here's some of the many pictures that were taken.


tyler and the Nauvoo temple all lit up beautifully at night.


Sorry it's crooked. This is all of us in front of Carthage jail. The window at the top is the one Joseph Smith fell out of when he was shot and killed. I felt weird smiling for this picture. It was really neat to go back there and it brought back a lot of memories of when I went with my family.

See the rash on Brynlee's cheeks? Well it's worse now and it's on her neck, arms, and legs too.

Grandpa took a lot of cool action shots like this. he always jumped at an angle to try to get as far away from us as possible. He kept getting mad when we partially caught him so he wouldn't drowned. It was so funny.

Crooked again. Grandpa keeping Bryn entertained after she got sick of the pool.
This is the view of the refinery where Kenny works. Looks pretty cool at night.

Brynlee is sick still, or again. I don't think her antibiotic was strong enough to kill her UTI. We're doing benadryl for her terrible rash and tylenol for her fever. We've got a doc. appt. on Wed. to test her urine again. Hopefully this will all get cleared up quickly so we can go on vacation for Thanksgiving. unfortunately Tyler came down with a cold this weekend too, and now has a cough. We'll get through it.

Team Kendsay

Disclaimer: I am about to brag about my husband. If you think it's cheesy or annoying, then don't read it. But right now I just can't help it.

I believe in marriage. One of the reasons is that you always have a partner, a teammate, someone you can always count on. I don't know what I did to get so lucky, but I am sure glad that Kenny is my partner. Of course we have our problems to work through, but we make a pretty dang good team.

Last night as I drove to the gym, I was thinking about how lucky I am to have Kenny. The last few weeks we've got a pretty good system worked out. Every morning he wakes up at 4:30, or 4:45 and goes to the gym. He works out hard, then he goes to his job and works hard there to support our family so I can stay home. He comes home at 6 in time for dinner. I clean up while he plays with the kids (or bathes them depending on the day). We have scriptures (and FHE if it's Mon.) and I feed Brynlee. Then I leave and go to the gym (usually by 7), and he plays with the kids and then puts them to bed. I LOVE this system. Pros: It keeps me from eating a big dinner and avoids all my late-night snacking. Kenny gets some one-on-one time with the kiddos which they all need. Also I get some "me time" every day for an 1 to 1 1/2 hours which is SOO nice. No matter what kind of a day it's been I always know I can de-stress and unwind and take out any extra emotions on the treadmill or bike. The only negative side to this is we don't get as much time together. But we have both found that we're much happier and better people when we exercise consistently. So that's what works for us, for now. But I am so grateful that Kenny takes so much on so that I can go work out because he knows that's what makes me happy.

When we found out we were expecting Tyler, I think I just figured I would go to school until the baby was born, then I would stop and let Kenny finish. He had something else in mind. He encouraged me to go ahead and finish what I started, and get my degree. I will tell you it wasn't easy (whoever said it should be?) being sick and pregnant during school, and obviously a whole new world of challenge once Tyler joined our family. Lots of times I didn't want to finish, but Kenny was always there to remind me of our goal and pick up any extra slack to help me get there. He knew that ultimately it would be rewarding and make me a happier and better person. We were completely broke, but we were happy. And when we did graduate, 32 weeks pregnant with our second child, I realized how right Kenny was. It was, and is so great to have done that. I am certainly not saying that every couple has to both get their bachelors degrees to show their love for each other. Obviously everyone's situations are so different. I'm just saying that for us, it's awesome to have those few rough years of experience to start our marriage off with. We look back on that and say man that was tough, but we did it, and we did it together. We make sacrifices for each other, and know we can work through everything together.

Kenny just helps me to dream things that I never even dreamed for myself. I think that's how it should be. He helps me push myself and expect more from myself, and helps me to understand what it means to be equal partners. It's humbling to be loved so much by this man, and it makes me grateful every day that I have him.

70's is where it's at

I cannot believe the gorgeous weather we've had this weekend. It warmed right up and has been in the 70's and sunny and oh so nice. A beautiful few days to hold onto as we head into winter soon. We took advantage of it and spent a lot of time outside. Yesterday, after a picnic in our backyard, Kenny and I played a few competitive rounds of Bocce ball while the kids took an afternoon nap and it felt like a date! It was so much fun. Yesterday was actually a really good day. the whole thing was so fun. We got a lot of cleaning and work done, and we both got a good workout in at the gym, and all had fun together too. It was especially nice to have our sweet Brynlee back after a rough week of being sick.

Last Sunday she started to get a fever. A couple days later I took her into the doctor because I couldn't get her fever to break and it was at about 102. She didn't have any other symptoms, just this weird fever. They swabbed her to test for swine flu...negative. Then they told me it might be a urinary tract infection and needed to test her urine. So we went home with a pee bag after an unsuccessful catheter (sp?) attempt and took it in the next day. Her fever started to leave, but she got a weird rash and was still really fussy, and jsut cried for waht seemed like no reason all the time. So I knew she wasn't feeling well. Anyway, the Doctor called me a few days later and told me that her urine tested positively for a UTI and we started her on an antibiotic a few hours later. The next day I noticed a dramatic difference and she's been doing great ever since. I love having her back to normal during the day, and at night. We both need our sleep.

Does anybody know how I can fix my blog? For some reason it says I haven't updated it in a few weeks on everyone else's list thing. When I read other people's blogs and they have the lists to the side of who updated and when, mine is still like 2 weeks behind and I don't know what I did to ruin it. Any ideas of how to fix that??

The Fuzzy Caterpillar Plague

I don't know the technical name for these things, but we just call them fuzzy caterpillars. They are everywhere. It's like a plague of them. They are somewhat overlapping with the ladybug plague we are still trying to pull out of. Red lady bugs come flying and dropping in the door whenever you open it and they're just all over the place. Now it's these fuzzy caterpillars. When we go on walks our main activity is finding and watching these fuzzy guys. Ty loves them. He has classified them into two categories: smashed and not smashed. Because while some are still crawling around, it seems there are even more of them with their guts strewn across the roads. I'm not a big fan of them, but the other day (on Halloween actually) Kenny and Ty were holding them and rubbing them on their cheeks. Such boys.

Happy Halloween

Here in Edwardsville it's been a long-standing tradition to do a Halloween parade on Halloween. It's so big, in fact that everybody goes trick-or-treating the night before here, so they can all attend the parade. So on Friday, the 30th, we got the kids dressed up, until I realized Bryn would be staying here with me to give candy out to the trick-or-treaters, so I took her constume back off. Tyler didn't want to wear his mask, which was fine. Kenny took him and they went with our next-door neighbors, the Richies. Unfortunately I didn't realize our porch light was burned out until it was too late--how lame is that?! So I opened our front door (we have a screen door in front of it) and turned on all the lights, in hopes that people would get the message. We did get a few groups, but not nearly as many kids as I'd hoped for. So unfortunately we are left with far too much candy. Tyler sure did have a great time though. He thinks this whole halloween thing is pretty awesome.



I'm not sure what's going on with that glow stick in his mouth...
On the 31st, I decided to start a new tradition of making our meal in a pumpkin. I had never even heard of that until this year so from now on that's what we're doing. It was fun. this year we just did sloppy-jo's cuz we didn't have time for anything else, but it was yummy and fun. Afterwards we went to the parade again, with our neighbors, the Richies. They've got 3 little kids 5, 3, and 1. Ty loves playing with them. It was super cold, and we ended up leaving a little early because the kids were tired and freezing and their buckets were once again full of candy.

We also enjoyed stake conference this weekend. There were some good talks, and some interesting ones. But let's be honest, the most memorable part was in the opening prayer when the man prayed for, "...our prophet, Charles Monson."

How embarrassing for him! We sure had a good laugh over it.