Matching Cousins= Cuteness Embodied

I just downloaded my pictures from today and I will do more on Christmas another day, but I had to put up these darling pictures of Megan and Lily in matching pajamas.  They did a little photo shoot for us after their bath, which was a very wild and splashy one,  I might add.

Superheroes!!!!

They've discovered a new activity which involves hours of uninterrupted, non-fighting, non-mess- making play. Hope this lasts!!!!

 

Quick Trip

My mom and I went to Utah for the weekend to spend some time with Marianne. We had a lot of fun shopping, eating good food, talking, laughing and just being together. On Saturday we were able to go see the BYU folk dancers perform "Christmas around the World." It was a super fun weekend....just went by way too fast, at least for me. Andrew would probably have a different opinion about that, although he's always happy to let me go and have a little getaway. I'm a lucky gal!!!

Thanksgiving

We enjoyed a nice Thanskgiving afternoon at the Stout's with lots of yummy food. We forgot our camera, but Auntie Sarah snapped this picture of Megan coloring so intently with her Uncle Evan, who she adores.

 

We then came home and decorated our Christmas tree and surprisingly only ended up with a couple of broken bulbs. When the kids went to bed we had to rearrange things a bit because all the ornaments were on the lower half of the tree, sometimes 3 or 4 in one spot and all overlapping eachother. It made us laugh!!

Jordan was surprised to see a violin just his size and tried to play it.

Christmas love is in the air!!!

Treasure

Jordan discovered my little chest of rocks my mom gave me after my grandpa passed away. He was a rock collector and loved polishing and making things out of the treasures he found. The chest was locked and Jordan asked if we could find the key and see what treasures were inside. It was so fun watching the anticipation on his face as we unlocked the chest. He spent a long time looking at all the rocks and when I came back a little later I was not surprised when I saw what he had done with them....

Here he is on the same day. He cut out all of these spikes made out of paper and had me tape them to his back so he could be an ankylosaurus...you know, 2 years ago I had no idea that there was ever such a thing as an ankylosaurus. It's amazing all the things you learn when you become a mother!!

Little Helper

The other day while Jordan was at preschool, Megan and I spent some time in the yard raking leaves. I raked the leaves, while she picked up the piles I made and put them in a bucket. I thought for sure it wouldn't last very long and she'd get distracted with something else, but she was my little helper for a good hour or so. The little bucket she carried around was almost as big as she was and she looked so cute with her little baby backpack on. Who knew a 2 year old could be so helpful?

Halloween Craziness

Today has been a crazy, hectic day...and not just because it's halloween. This weekend was Andrew's turn to be the on-call nurse manager. He had to go into work for a couple of hours after church to fill in for one of the nurses...usually no big deal, other than the fact that he locked his keys in his car.

Megan was taking her nap when he needed to come home, so when my home teacher called and asked if he could come visit I asked if he could do a favor instead and run the car key out to Andrew's work. When the home teacher showed up I went to get the car key off my car ring to disover that it wasn't there. I called Andrew and asked him where my car key was and he told me that he had taken my car key because he couldn't find his keys this morning and he had to be at a church meeting at 6 am. Our home teacher left and I went on a mad frenzy trying to find Andrew's lost keys so we wouldn't have to call a locksmith. A while later I did find them, went over to ask the neighbor girl if she could sit in my house for an hour with my sleeping baby and Jordan and I drove to Andrew's work.

When we got to Andrew's work and delivered the key he said he was coming right behind us, so when Jordan asked if he could ride with daddy we didn't think twice. I threw the car seat in Andrew's car and off I drove....bad idea.

I got home to a ringing phone, which ended up being Andrew telling me that I needed to come back and pick up Jordan because one of the nurses had a family emergency and had to leave so Andrew had to cover for her until they could find a replacement. I woke up Megan and back we drove to Andrew's work.

When I got there Jordan was happy as a clam because Andrew's boss had taken Jordan trick-or-treating in her office and he was carrying around a huge basket of candy with an even bigger smile on his face. He was getting a lot of special treatment and attention from Andrew's co-workers and patients.

After driving back and forth for 2 hours, we enjoyed a nice relaxing evening at home. Jordan passed out the candy he got from Andrew's boss to all the neighborhood kids who came trick-or-treating. Every time he gave someone candy he would say, "I'm a good neighbor." It was very cute....a nice way to end a hectic day.

We've had some fun halloween festivities the past week. Here are some highlights....

We went to a pumpkin carving party at the Leonard's house

They had lots of yummy food, which Megan enjoyed thoroughly

Our ward had a halloween carnival complete with a huge slide

Andrew won the halloween contest at work. I didn't get a picture of him in it, but he was a cowboy, decked out with the full ensemble- chaps, spurs, lasso, fake gun, saddle bag. Jordan had fun dressing up like daddy one morning.

Here's Jordan passing out his candy to the trick-or-treaters...being a good neighbor!

This pretty much sums up Megan's mood today...and maybe mine a little too. Happy Halloween!!!!!

Pumpkin Patch

I'm sitting here at my computer at 2:00 on Friday afternoon in a quiet house...except for the angels I can hear singing in my head...Halleluia!!!! Both kids are down napping, which doesn't happen all that often around here anymore. Jordan's been waking up the past couple mornings at 5:30, so a nap was needed today. I thought I'd take advantage of the precious time by putting up some cute pictures we took last weekend when we went to the pumpkin patch. Usually fall days around here are cloudy and rainy, but we've sure lucked out with sunny weather the past couple of weeks.

Jordan and Andrew had to take a little detour in the corn maze when Jordan was having a potty emergency. What a convenient place to have an emergency!

The cutest little gingerbread I've ever seen...if I do say so myself!

Field Trip

Jordan went on his first field trip with his preschool last week. It was the highlight of his week and he's been talking about it ever since. The first thing they did was they went on a cow train ride...

This is about half of the train. It was so cute watching them ride off with their little heads bobbing.

We went on a hay ride


They played in a room full of corn kernels. Jordan was buried in corn by his friend Alexis.

We also went through a corn maze, saw animals, fed the goats and of course, picked out a pumpkin to bring home. Here is Jordan with his teacher, Ms. Shauna and both of her preschool classes.

Enjoying our Culdesac

One of the things we love about our new house is that it's at the end of a culdesac, which makes riding a bike much more fun. Jordan never learned to ride his bike until we moved here because the road at our last house was a little too busy. He loves to ride his bike now and gets out there every chance he gets. As you'll see in the pictures, Megan also joins in on the action. She always wants to wear the biggest helmet she can find and never really "rides" her bike. She pushes it around, sits on it for a little while, then pushes it somewhere else. She mainly just tries to follow Jordan around, pushing around her bike with her gigantic helmet on. She cracks me up!!

We're Home!!!!

Well, we're all moved in and it feels great!!! I was telling Andrew last night that for the first since I left home to go to college 13 year ago, I feel like I'm truly home. I think the best part about unpacking was that I actually got to unpack my china. It's been sitting in the original box wrapped up in the bubble wrap since we got married and it felt good to rip off all the bubble wrap and throw it away....because we're here to stay. Here are a few shots off our new place...

I grew up in a yellow house, so this color just seemed perfect to me.

I've never had a living room, so I'm excited to get my piano in here and fix this room up.

I took this picture standing in the kitchen. The family room is down 2 steps and there's a den and laundry room/bathroom off this room.

This is my view as I'm standing at my kitchen sink. I love looking out and seeing a wall of green.

This is our mimosa tree in the backyard, which Jordan has named the "dinosaur" tree...not really sure why, but not really surprised.

HOORAY!!!!!!.....Ughhhhh!!!!!!!

Our house that we made an offer on back in January was finally approved (it was a short sale, hence the 8 month wait). We are thrilled and excited to FINALLY be able to move in. That's the HOORAY part. The UGHHH part is this:

The dreaded packing. I am so sick of packing. This is our 5th move in the 8 years we've been married and I am tired of it. It's a good thing this is the last time because I don't think I'd be able to bring myself to do it. At least this time I'm not recovering from a C-Section with a newborn baby in tow, so that's a plus. As you can see, the kids are "helping" by decorating the boxes and if you look closely you may be able to spy a T-Rex!!!

Preschool

Today was Jordan's first day of preschool. To say that he was excited would be an understatement, especially when you consider the fact that I woke up at 1 am to him calling out, "Mommy, time to wake up! Let's get ready for preschool!" We snapped this picture before we headed out the door. As you can see, Megan was caught up in the excitement and wanted to wear her backpack too.

Swimming

We are enjoying the last days of summer around here. We took the kids to a park yesterday that had a little kid pool and fountain. This is Megan's version of swimming....

...just getting the little tips of her toes in is enough for her. Whenever I tried to coax her in and get her a little more wet she would squeal, "No thank you Mommy," in a very high pitched, frantic voice. The water was pretty cold so I really don't blame her for just wanting to chill and be our little sun bathing beauty!

Cabin Adventures

We just got home today from a little trip to the cabin. We were only there for 2 nights and it just wasn't long enough. By the time we were all settled in it felt like it was already time to come home. I was telling my mom the other day that the cabin is finally fun again. I went through a period when the kids were just little, where it seemed like all I was doing was keeping them from eating the dirt and they never slept well which meant they were tired and cranky...and so was I. Now Jordan is getting to the age where he can do more things and it is so fun to watch him playing and doing all the things I remember doing as a kid at the cabin.

We went on a hike to Boulder Cave. I wasn't sure how the kids would react to being in a cave, but they loved it. When we got to the end Jordan wanted to walk back through it to the entrance and then we turned around and went back out again. The whole time he was shining his flashlight all around and said he was looking for dinosaurs.

He found a "not so comfortable" rock recliner for a little rest.

Collecting baby frogs at the lake

Megan was actually adventuresome and went on a ride in the kayak. She usually doesn't like trying new things so we were pleasantly surprised. Whenever we ask her if she wants to ride a horse her reply is always, "No, I ride stroller.

Even Baron is smiling in this picture!

Other activities that we didn't get pictures of included: Andrew took Jordan shooting for the first time, our nightly hikes to the river to wear the kids out before bed and seeing 30 head of elk peacefully grazing in the meadow...that is until Jordan started doing his elk call, which scared them all away.