Megan Turns 2

Where has the time gone? Our little baby turned 2 today. I was reading what I wrote on the blog entry for Megan's first birthday. Last year I wrote, "she is a perfect delight and has no idea how incredibly cute she is." I'd say the same statement rings true this year, except that now she DOES have a pretty good idea of how incredibly cute she is! We love our little Meg-pie to pieces and had fun celebrating her special day at Grandma Erin and Grandpa James' house tonight.

Blowing out the candles turned into a group effort.

Grandma Erin made her the cutest little "baby bundle." She came up with the idea without a pattern or anything and it turned out so cute. It was a perfect gift for our little "mother" who can never have too many babies.

Happy Birthday to our sweet Megan Rose. We love you and cannot imagine what our lives would be like without your sweet, yet sassy personality to brighten our family.

Teddy Bear Picnic

The teddy bear picnic was a little early this year since Jordan and his family will soon be moving to Texas to go to Endodontics school. The weather was rainy so it was at the church this year, but was still a lot of fun. Treasure hunt, crafts, relay races, puppet shows, games, candy, good food...all make an excellent combination to show the kids a good time.

Story time with Little Red Riding Hood

Puppet shows

Games

Bear Bingo

Birthday party for Matthew and Megan who are 1 week apart

Pinata

Here's a video of the kids playing Freeze Dance.

As a side note, it is now 8:00 and I called my parent's house to talk to my mom. I thought for sure after such a long day putting on this picnic she would be sitting with her legs up relaxing. I should have known differently, my dad said she was out mowing the lawn. Yes, my mom is amazing...or maybe just a little crazy! Thanks Mom for the great day!!!!!

Memorial Day

We spent Memorial Day weekend up at the cabin, which was kind of a celebration for us because Andrew had just finished his last quarter of school. The weather wasn't the greatest, but we still had a lot of fun and the kids actually slept great this time which has never been the case in the past. I think we'll be seeing a lot more of the cabin this summer than we have the last couple of years...in fact, we'd live there all summer if it were up to Jordan.

It's so nice having older cousins around. Megan just adores them and loves the attention they give her.

Here's Jordan with his bucket of dinosaurs. This is actually the bucket of dinosaurs that began his whole obsession. Last 4th of July Jordan discovered these dinosaurs that Grandma got as cabin toys, and we've never been the same since.

Megan tried on every boot by the front door, until she settled on these as her favorite pair.

I promise Andrew and I were there too. For some reason, we just never seem to end up in the pictures. Andrew spent the weekend helping my dad with all sorts of projects, including fixing plumbing problems, cutting down some dead trees and clearing the horse trails. As for me, I just enjoyed the fresh air and loved watching the smiles on my kid's faces as they played and did manage to slip away for a little while to enjoy a nice, quiet walk in the woods. It was a great weekend!!!

Babies, babies and more babies!

I thought I would do a post on Megan's fascination with babies. She loves mothering all her little babies...feeding, changing, burping, rocking, she's got it all down. All of the baby pictures in the house have kiss marks on them because she loves kissing the pictures. The other day I had to laugh when she was playing with a calculator and all of the sudden she squealed, "A BABY!" I couldn't possibly imagine how she connected a calculator with a baby and when I went to look she was pointing to the number 3. Everything in her little world is a baby. Here is just a sampling of the many pictures we have of Megan with her babies.

She loves looking through my baby photo album and kissing all the baby pictures of me.

She makes little nests for her babies all the time, gathering her blankies and lining up her babies. She did this all on her own.

When Andrew got home from a church meeting, Megan brought all her babies and stuffed animals for him to hold. She does this with my violin student's parents too. When they go to leave they are covered in babies and animals.

Here she is wearing her favorite shoes... the ones with the highest heels. She always acts very serious when she's wearing them.

I snapped this picture of her sleeping the other night, surrounded by all her little ones.

Mother's Day Surprises

Mother's Day was full of surprises this year. Andrew surprised me with breakfast in bed, complete with blueberry pancakes, bacon, scrambled eggs, strawberries and even a little chocolate (he knows me well). Jordan surprised me with this cute card he had made for me (with the help of Andrew). I was also surprised when Jordan went up with the primary children to sing during Sacrament meeting that he actually sang along with the other kids. Alison is the primary chorister and had told me that usually he's pretty quiet and doesn't sing much in primary.


I also drove to Spokane on Mother's Day to surprise Marianne who was recovering from a major surgery to treat her colon cancer. The 4.5 hour drive was heavenly...a quiet car all to myself, left alone to my thoughts, music and books on tape. It went by a lot faster than I was expecting. When I walked into her room, Marianne had a shocked look on her face and kept saying, "What? What? How did you get here? What is going on?" Then we both burst into tears and had a good cry. I could only stay for 24 hours but it was well worth the drive just to be able to spend some time with my sweet sister. I'm in awe of her strength, her optimism and faith. She's fighting for her life and handling her trial without complaining and with a smile on her face. She is absolutely amazing!!!!
You are probably not surpised that this was a Mother's Day I will never forget!!

Letterboxing

Yesterday we took advantage of the beautiful weather and went on a little hike around Deep Lake in Enumclaw. We went to Letterboxing.org to print off some clues that led to some hidden treasures along the way. We only found 3 of the 9 boxes, but still had a lot of fun following the clues and looking for them.

This was the first treasure we found and Jordan was so excited to find it, but very disappointed that we had to put it back for the next person to find. I forgot a stamp pad and paper so it was kind of anticlimactic to find the stamp and then just put it back without doing anything with it.

It was such a beautiful day, beautiful surroundings, with my beautiful family....doesn't get much better than that.

Sous Chef

I have enlisted the help of Jordan as my assistant when cooking meals. This is for 2 reasons. A) The kids are always fighting while I'm distracted in the kitchen and can't see what they're doing and B)Jordan will more likely eat the dinner if he's helped prepare it, especially since the whole time we're oohing and ahhing over what a wonderful dinner he made.

As you can see, he's also become artistic with his food. Now if only I could get him to actually eat the artwork.