Memorial Day Weekend, Part 2

We spent Monday with Erin, Brian, Ellie, and my mom in Cache Valley. It was really overcast and rainy all day so we spent the afternoon playing Ticket to Ride (which is one of my favorite games, even though I'm horrible at it) while the kids napped. It finally cleared up in the evening so we went for a short hike up Green Canyon. It was a little chilly, but really pretty. The cloud cover made for great picture taking and you can probably tell that I've been messing around with some of these pictures. I'm a little embarrassed to post photos I've manipulated since my friend Natalie always takes the most amazing pictures, so don't judge my very amateur work!

Jeff and Brian, with the "help" of Max and Ellie, where throwing Frisbees in the campground. Jeff plays ultimate Frisbee with some guys he met in our last ward when the weather is good. It was always a common past time in Logan and makes me think of students throwing Frisbees across the quad in between classes. As we were coming over the mountain into Cache County Jeff and I were talking about how Logan still feels like home to both of us. I'm not sure if we would move back right now if we were given the chance, but we sure miss it sometimes. College was such a wonderful and fun time for both of us and we often talk about how glad we were to be able to have those single years before we got married.

Here's Jeff, Max, and my mom. Max was walking between them holding both of their hands on the way back. We were very lucky to have my mom live with us for about a year and Max has a special relationship with her because of this. I love watching them together and I'm so glad that he has kept that closeness to her even though she doesn't live with us anymore.

I am trying to make sure that I end up in the blog periodically, which is hard since I'm the one who is usually taking the pictures and when I do end up in the picture I don't like the way I look. This isn't really an exception to this, but I figure I need to get over that, because I love seeing pictures of my friends/family on their blogs. So here you go, a picture of our little family.

I love this picture of Emily. It makes me think of an Old Testament woman. She looks so cute all bundled up and peaking out of her blankets.

I was trying to get a picture of Max and Ellie looking at the flowers. Of course Max looked at the flowers for about one second and then was running all over the place. Ellie, on the other hand, wanted to take the time to really study and touch the flowers. She is so different in personality from Max, which is one of the reasons that I am glad that they are such good friends. (That is when Max isn't hitting her.)

Memorial Day Weekend, Part 1

We spent Sunday with Jeff's family up in Box Elder county. We went out to the cemetery by Bill and Deanne's house to put flowers on Jeff's sister's grave. She died when Deanne was eight months pregnant with her and would have been the same age as me. Jeff's family puts flowers on her grave every Memorial Day.

The cemetery where she is buried has a beautiful view of the Bear River. The Tremonton area is such a pretty, peaceful place with lots of open fields and farm land.

Here's Jeff's older brother Brian with two of his kids, Justin and Chloe. Since the cemetery is less than a mile from Jeff's parent's house, they took the opportunity to ride one of the four wheelers.

Jeff's sister Marianne helped me keep Max wrangled while Jeff was taking care of Emily and I was taking photos. One of the things I love about blogging is that it is making me a lot more conscious about documenting what is going on in our lives. As a result I am always watching for opportunities to take photos.

Max had been having some issues with going to the bathroom the last couple of months. This is the position he assumes when he's occupied with this task.

Little facts about our little kiddos...

Max says, "Sorry, again!" instead of just plain sorry, with a big grin on his face, sounding not in the least bit sorry.

Emily loves to blow bubbles. She can produce quite a bit of drool. I'm wondering how bad it is going to get when she is teething.

Max will say, "Don't cry, Hobbes" or "Don't cry, Emmie". (He has obviously heard me say this to Emily when she's crying and I can't get to her right away. Sometimes Emily's crying when he says this and sometimes she's not. I'm not sure about Hobbes.)

Emily frequently snorts when she is crying.

I listen to a lot of show tunes and oldies and I love to have music on when I'm cooking or cleaning up the kitchen. Lately, Max has been requesting that I turn the music on and is singing along to my music. It's kind of weird to hear a two year old singing "Little Shop of Horrors".

When Emily wakes up, if she was sleeping on her belly she hikes her little bum way up in the air.

Max has a hard time with opposites. He says cold-hot when something is too hot and he asks me to turn the music off when he really wants it on.

Attack of the Flies

A couple of weeks ago we had about six flies buzzing around our house. I thought this was odd since we had only had maybe two flies before in the 2 1/2 years that we have lived here. They were gone after a couple of days and I didn't really think any more of it until a few more showed up yesturday. Then this morning when I went downstairs to open the blinds I found about twenty flies in my living room. I felt like I was in the fly version of the movie "Birds". They were all just sitting on my walls and windows, waiting. I hope they don't decide to attack.

(I actually vacuumed them up a couple of hours later. Max keeps calling them spiders, even though I tell him over and over that they aren't spiders, they're flies.)

The Big Boy Bed

After Max climbed out of his crib last week, we decided to move him into the twin bed we have in his room. (This is my bed from my single days. The comforter is actually from when I was in high school and Jeff thinks it's silly to buy Max a new comforter, so that's why it's all flowery. I'm working on getting him to change his mind, though.) ;) Max has actually transitioned to a big bed a lot better than I would have imagined. We've put a child proof lock on the door so he can't get out of his room at night, and for the most part he has gone to bed and slept very well. The sad thing is that nap time has pretty much disappeared and I'm thinking that might be a permanent change. Being the very active boy that he is, I still need a break during the day so that I can be a nice mom, so we have changed nap time into quiet time in his room, which he also does pretty good at most of the time. We went to the park for lunch today and I think the sun and running around has sucked his energy out of him, because he actually laid right down and is taking a nap on his bed right now. I'm thinking that we might be spending a lot of time at the park this summer. I didn't really think that this would be a hard change for me emotionally, but when I look at him sleeping in his bed it makes my heart ache a little. He looks so little in that big bed and so grown up all at the same time. I've known for a while he wasn't a baby any more, but this move just seemed to really make that realization sink in. I can't believe how fast he is growing up!!

Update: About four days after we moved him to a bed, Max started napping again. I guess the novelty of a big boy bed just needed to wear off. I am very grateful to have nap time back!

Random little nothings

Emily has found her thumb. I have to admit that I am actually kind of glad because now she can soothe herself. She was on the point of sleeping through the night when she was about two months old and then we switched her antibiotics and she did not like the new medicine at all. She quit napping, starting getting up earlier in the morning and sometimes in the middle of the night, and was very fussy because her belly hurt and she had diarrhea all the time. She went through 20 diapers one day (this is not an exaggeration). We started giving her probiotics a few weeks ago and it has helped immensely. She is back to being my sweet little girl, she is napping great and sleeping through the night. I am so spoiled, I know! :)

Max loves to eat oatmeal for breakfast. (Or, as he calls it, opameal.) He is just barely getting to the point where he will choose pancakes instead some of the time. Who doesn't want pancakes over oatmeal!? It can be a little messy to clean off of his clothes, so I started pinning my kitchen towel from the day before around his waist so that when he is done eating I can just take it off and he is all clean.

Max is just always doing funny groupings with his toys. I don't know if you can tell or not, but he has put one crayon on each section of train track.

The new thing to do with his toy cars is to line them up in the window sill of his bedroom. He went really crazy on this day and lined them up upside down.

Emily has started laughing the last couple of weeks and it is sooo stinking cute. She is such a rolly-polly happy baby. I can't believe how big she's gotten and how fun she is. She's also working on rolling over, but isn't quite there yet.

Max climbed out of his crib this morning. I was feeding Emily in my room when I heard Max open his door and there he was standing in his doorway looking very proud of himself. I put him back in to see if he would do it again and one minute later he was on the floor playing with his toys. I have been dreading this moment for a while now and am actually surprised it has taken him this long to do it since he is such a mischievous, active little boy. He still napped for me today and went to bed tonight just like normal, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed that this new skill doesn't mean an end to life as I know it!

Tag, I'm it!

How to play this game of tag. Post these rules on your blog. List 3 joys, 3 fears, 3 goals, 3 current obsessions/collections, 3 random surprising facts about yourself. Tag 5 people at the end of your post by leaving their names. Let them know they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.

Joys
1. The gospel
2. My husband and children
3. Fall. Something about the way it smells, the crisp air, the colors and knowing that the holidays and snow are just around the corner makes me very excited and happy.

Fears
1. Jeff dying young
2. Not being a good enough wife and mother.
3. Having to get up in front of people. If I even think about getting asked to talk in church I get sick to my stomach.

Goals
1. To be more patient with my children.
2. To get back into the habit of daily scripture study and prayer. I was in the habit for years and now I’m not anymore and I’m really trying to get back into the habit.
3. To paint our hallway and family room and to redo our laundry room/half bath this summer.

Obsessions/Collections
1. Projects. (These include sewing, craft, house, yard, ect.)One of the things I’m working on right now is finishing the projects I have all ready started before I add anything new to the pile.
2. Treats, but this is something I’m trying to work on. ;)
3. Blogging

Random Surprising Facts About Me
1. I love listening to records and have a pretty big record collection.
2. I am a very systematic person. For example, I like the dishwasher to be loaded a certain way. Everything has a specific place that I like it to go and if Jeff loads it “wrong”, I’ll move it to the correct place.
3. I had about 2 dozen imaginary friends as a child, each complete with a name, personality, and background.

I tag Garbina, Fred, Tobey, Susan, and Dina