Boring

This is the boring post that follows the holiday season!  It seems so anti-climatic and I think that is why it has taken me forever to post anything!  But we have had a few exciting things happen…we’ll start with Jack.

This 3 year old started Primary.  And besides his first week where he was into turning the lights on and off, he has been stellar.  Now I’m sure he is his teachers’ biggest challenge, but he is sitting in his chair most of the time when I spy on him and he seems to be loving it!  I couldn’t be happier.  He also started going to the Joy School that a few moms in my ward have been doing.  He is also doing awesome there!  My heart just feels glad cause there have been a few times (and I’m sure they are not over!) that I have had breakdowns worrying about this little boy and his behavior.  I sure love him and think he is so fabulous!  But almost daily we have some issue like the last 2 pictures illustrate.  In said pictures he got into my mascara and wasn’t too happy when I tried to follow him with the camera.  I think he thought he was in trouble which he wasn’t.  But next time he does it, he will be busted.

Now to Sophie…

This lady had her first Dum-dum sucker and it turned her mouth completely blue.  The picture doesn’t do it justice.  She turned 16 months a week or so ago and she is becoming a little talker.  I counted the other night and she can say 20+ words.  Now granted…most of them the average person would not recognize to be words.  But I totally get her.  I painted her toes the other day just to see if it was possible and it is, in fact, possible!  Pretty cute, but don’t look to close.  And finally the kiddos are making good use of Sophs’ new table.  They play “tea party” at least once a day.  Pretty cute and it is nice to see them play well together since it doesn’t always happen that way.

Christmas 2011

I have quite a few pictures so I’m gonna break it down.  We’ll start with…

Christmas Eve

Sophs got an early Christmas gift!  We turned her car seat around.  She loved watching Rudolph with Jack on the way down to Grandma Pett’s.  But we’ll just say that it hasn’t stopped all of her meltdowns in the car as we had hoped.  She just doesn’t love the car so much.

We had a great night at Grandma Pett’s for Christmas Eve.  Our best surprise came when Melanie, Jake and the kiddos showed up at Grandma’s.  They came all the way from New Jersey and no one knew about it.  Well…Dan and I had our suspicions!  We seriously talked about it at least 10+ times and we just really hoped that they would surprise us…and then they did!  It was so wonderful.  Thank you Herways!  Jack was elated to see his cousins and be a shepherd in the Nativity.  And Sophs just loves Grandma’s playroom and her best playmate, Daddy.

Christmas Day

We had a lovely Christmas day.  The kids were bursting with excitement to see what Santa brought and he really did not disappoint.  Jack was thrilled with his new bike and once Sophie realized the cute little table was for her, she could not be kept away from her chair.  The kids still definitely don’t completely understand Christmas and really are just content playing with one or two toys instead of unwrapping all their gifts.  But it is so cute!  I think one of our greatest Christmas gifts came when we went to church and heard from Elder Christofferson of the Quorum of the Twelve who just happens to be in Dan’s home ward.  Not too many people can say they heard an Apostle speak on Christmas and I felt really blessed.

Cousin Time

The rest of the week we stayed in Sandy at Dans’ parent’s house.  It was fun to have cousin time and be able to relax together.  We did three 1000 piece puzzles, watched movies, played games and mostly entertained the kiddos doing little outings and playing a lot.  We were able to go the the Hogle Zoo for Zoolights one night.  I thought it was a great time even though we only saw like 2 animals.  At least the weather was somewhat decent and we did not freeze our tails off!  We played the X Box Kinect dancing game and it was a big hit.  Look at Jake and Dan go!  We watched the BYU bowl game…thanks for pulling off that miracle Cougs!  And we went to a BYU basketball game.  Love training the next generation of Cougars!  We just had a wonderful vacation!  It is always hard to go back to real life but we were so happy that we could all be together again!

A Kerri Christmas

We had Kerri and Deeds over last weekend.  Kerri brought her Christmas presents to us so we could open them.  The kids thought it was pretty fun and Jack LOVES his present.  Sophie girl got that adorable outfit from Aunt Kerri.  I can’t get over it.  Thanks Aunt Kerri for a great early Christmas!

15 months

Sophie girl had her 15 month check up yesterday.  Here are her stats…  22 lbs. 6 oz. (45%), 30.5 inches (50%), 19 in. head (93%).  So besides packing on 2 pounds in the last 3 months she hasn’t grown much.  In fact, she measured 1/2 inch shorter than her 12 month visit.  Shows you how accurate the measurements are when they are babies.  Hahaha…

Well it can’t be said enough but it unbelievable that she is 15 months old.  She is getting smarter and smarter each day.  She loves to copy everything we do.  She knows about 5 words (Mama, Dada, Ought oh, Thank you and drink).  She loves to fold her hands during prayer and do puzzles.  She is getting better about going down for bed and only cries sometimes.  Thank goodness.  She has some pretty good facial expressions and likes to play peek a-boo.  She is starting to get really fast at walking.  It is almost like a run.  She doesn’t really like to be left alone and will usually follow us wherever we go.  She is a spunky lady but she is a happy girlie and we love her to death.

Just had to include a photo of Jack.  This is what he did with his spaghetti noodles one night at dinner.  I did have to help him with the K but he did the rest by himself.  He is really getting more into letters and the sounds the make and how words are spelled, etc.  It is pretty fun to see him learn more and more.

St. George Getaway

This past weekend we went down to St. George for a much needed little break.  It is crazy how it can only be in the low 50s outside and feel so so good.  I felt like I should be wearing shorts.  And that is a true sign that I have lived in Utah way too long.  Our friends, the Mills, invited us to spend the weekend in a vacation home with them.  We thought they were pretty brave to travel in our car with us and hang out with the kiddos all weekend.  But I must say our kids were pretty awesome this trip.  Dan and Mark enjoyed some golf, Katrina and I enjoyed some shopping, we all loved Zions National Park and seeing the Jewkes, and the kids just LOVE staying at a “hotel house” as Jack called it.  Good times!

O Christmas Tree

We went and got our tree this last weekend.  It was freezing cold outside so we couldn’t be a methodical as we like picking it out.  But it really is lovely and the kids have had a great time pulling ornaments down everyday.  I currently have 2 on the counter that need repair.  I love fresh trees!  My house smells divine.  I just hope I can keep it alive longer than last years.

I so wish that last photo had not come out blurry.  We strung the lights after the kids went to bed so the next morning they were on when the kids got up and Sophie was just mesmerized.  It was the cutest thing ever.  And yes, my children do wake up when it is still dark outside.  Jack was the cutest boy ever at the tree farm.  He was running everywhere so excited about the trees.  His favorite part was when he found a Jack-sized tree.  It made him so so happy!

Slacker

So this is by far the biggest break I have taken on the blog.  My apologies everybody!  We really have not been up to much since Halloween I guess.  And we were just hit with the flu bug at our house big time.  My kids have never had the flu.  Its true that they have thrown-up before but they have never thrown-up so much that their tummies were empty.  It was pretty much the saddest thing ever.  And it lasted forever!  Sophie was still barfing 6 days later.  Yuck.  I have done so much laundry and changed the sheets so many times I must deserve a year long break!  But we survived!  The sad part was that it really ruined our Thanksgiving.  I thought I had sufficiently cleaned the bug out of my house before I invited my family over, but there must have been germs somewhere because we saw it slowly pass through everyone in the house.  But for those of us who were well, I think our Thanksgiving feast did not disappoint.  And I think we created some great memories (like all 3 kids barfing within a 30 minute window) even if they weren’t exactly the ones we were looking for.

I love those last 2 photos.  Sophie has her usual attitude cause Isaac is trying to play with her and then the aftermath is his sweet soul starting to cry cause he has never heard a noise so loud.  And she seems so happy about it.  I know I always talk about this lady’s sass but it is a real thing.  She is only 14 months old and has already had a handful of timeouts.  Prayers would be greatly appreciated!  Most of the family shots above were taken by Jack.  The girls in the family woke up early Thanksgiving morning and ran the Utah Human Race 5K.  It was a good way to start the morning and justified about 1 scoop of our delicious Yam Souffle.  I heart Thanksgiving.

To wrap up this post I have a few random shots from the weeks leading up the our flu epidemic and Thanksgiving.  Jack really loves Little Drummer Boy by Josh Groban and Jingle Bells by Ryan Shupe so we listen to them over and over again.  One night him and Sophie were so happy and dancing all around.  So cute.  And it is small miracle when Dan makes it home before bedtime.  The kids were overjoyed to see him and immediately sat down on his lap for story time.  Love it!  Finally, Jack got out his blocks one morning and built a helicopter.  I was pretty proud of his creation.

Happy Halloween!

Here is the photo documentation of Halloween 2011!  It was a lot of fun to have Jack get more involved and be super excited for trick-or-treating.  Sophie did not like carving pumpkins but really warmed up to trick-or-treating and was a pro at putting candy in her basket by nights end.  We had exceptional Halloween weather this year.  No coats, gloves or hats were needed.  In fact, I was wearing a skirt with no leggings.  Loved it.  And a special bonus was that we walked out of our house just as our friends, the Ostlers, were coming out so we teamed up and it was super fun.  Their little Caleb is 3 weeks older than Sophs and so fun!  Jack ran into his friend Austin while we were out and it turns out they were both dinosaurs so we had to get a picture.  It was a fun day!

The last photo shows two of Dan’s decorated sugar cookies that he was pretty proud of–a dead cat and Slimer (I believe) from Ghostbusters.

Rise and Shout

We were lucky enough to be given 3 tickets to the BYU game this past Saturday.  And since the competition was less than stellar we were able to sit right by Kerri with no squeezing.  We had a good time watching the Cougs win and singing the fight song 100 times.  And the weather was beyond beautiful.  Can’t complain about wearing shorts on October 22nd in Utah.  Love it!

Here’s just a few random shots of Bugs.  Her hair is growing in more so occasionally I will do something with it.  She is sure cute but don’t be fooled…she is also a sassy lady as the second picture shows.  That is her letting me know that she was not happy I was touching her hand.  Ha!  And from the last picture you can tell that hairdos usually don’t last very long which is why I really lack motivation to do it!

Guess what…

…this little sassy pants is a walker!  Walking has now become her preferred mode of transportation which just means she seems bigger than ever.  And it also means that we can’t wait for nursery!  Just five more months.

Here are just a few photos I’ve taken recently of the kids.  My mom got the kids these cute Sunday outfits for their birthdays.  When we put Jack’s on he said “I look like the Bishop.”  Hahaha!  They look adorable!

And Jack has really taken to the camera lately.  He loves taking pictures.  Which means you all get to enjoy a rare but delightful treat!  2 pictures of me courtesy of Jack.  It’s your lucky day!