The Cuteness Factor

When people tell me my kids are cute I like to respond with, "Well they have to be! It saves their lives some days!" Totally true.

Had a few pictures of that cuteness I hadn't shared yet, so here you go.

I don't know why, but for a few weeks now Jossy occasionally will stick her head on the floor, look between her legs and watch the world upside down. Cracks me up.


Nothing like watching cartoons with a smelly hamper on your head, eh?

I took this carseat out of the car so that Matty could use a booster seat now. This will be Jossy's carseat, but I'm waiting to switch her over until she hits 20 lbs so that I don't have to have it rear facing for a couple weeks and then switch it around. So this carseat's just sitting in my apartment, and it's quickly become her new thrown. She always goes over to sit in it, occasionally bringing a toy with her. I love her chill look here, right down to the undone snap in the crotch.

Every morning when Dan picks up his laptop case to leave for work, Jossy RUNS over to the door so that she can escape when he leaves. (I guess life here is that bad.) But on this particular morning, she didn't try to pry the door open ahead of Daddy. Instead she surprised us and put her back to the door with her arms out. She wouldn't move. It really looked like she didn't want Daddy to go.

(By the way, don't you love the cutoffs? These jammies are supposed to have feet, but someone's toes were poking holes through so we just cut off the feet to give her a little more time in them. Hey, it works!)

I love this one. This is so typical around here. Jossy loves Matty and follows him about as much as she does me. So often when he's laying down watching TV she'll come over and sit right by him. She starts off nice, playing with his hair and even cuddling as seen here. But it's never more than a few minutes before she's trying to poke his eyes out and smacking him on the head laughing. I try to enjoy the peace because it never lasts long.

Matty and his dinosaur parade he created this morning. It stayed in place a good part of the day, or at least until Monster Jossy destroyed it.

One more. I had to show how much Jossy loves the new bibs I made!

Another Project

Let me preface this post by being frank and admitting I'm a lousy seamstress and don't pretend to have any talent. I do a pretty good job at patchwork quilts, but that's probably because it requires more math than actual sewing skill.

As I mentioned a while back, my mom showed me how to make bibs out of dish towels a couple weeks ago. I've always thought her homemade bibs were so cute and it would be fun to do some myself. She supervised doing the neckholes, and then I was on my own for the applique part, something I've never done before. They're far from perfect and very simple, but here's how my first attempt at bibs turned out:

I'm glad I've finally learned how to do them, but I think my next set of bibs will be store bought. :)

Vacation in Park CIty

We decided back in January that it was high time we took our first family vacation. We'd never gone anywhere with the kids except to visit family. We thought about going to Georgia to stay with my brother and his family, but tickets were just too much. Then we thought about San Diego but decided that we weren't brave enough to drive that far with two little ones. We figured Park City might be a good option because it was close by but still up in the mountains and away from home. We looked up deals at Marriott's MountainSide where Dan and I had stayed for our five year anniversary. We've always wanted to go back with the kids because we knew they'd love it. Luckily enough, they were having a killer deal so we were able to get an amazing 2 bedroom villa and even talked my oldest sister into coming along to play and help out!

Monday morning, the day we were scheduled to leave, Matty woke up with a fever. I was foolish enough to think the night before, "Wow! Our trip's tomorrow and somehow we've managed to keep everyone healthy for over a month now!" How stupid of me to jinx us like that! His only other symptom was a terrible headache, so we just kept giving him Motrin and hoped he'd be okay. His fever came off and on over the days we were there, but was always the worst in the middle of the night. We still managed to have some fun, though, even with a kid slightly more crabby than usual.

When we first arrived, Matty really didn't understand why we were there. Like I said, he'd never been on a vacation just for vacations sake, so he didn't really get it. He just wanted to go home. By the time we were ready to leave a few days later though, he kept asking to stay longer. :)

We took Matty on the Alpine Slide, which he LOVED! We also enjoyed swimming, ping pong, playing pool, life size chess, craft time, barbecuing by the pool, watching movies, eating candy apples, and just relaxing. Having the kids with us DEFINITELY made it a little harder to really relax, but we're still glad we got to have them there. (However, it will be awhile before we do that again.)

My sister has some pictures of us from the slide that I haven't gotten from her yet, but here are a few highlights of the rest of our trip:

View of our hotel pool as we
passed by on the chair lift

Sexy!

Gorgeous trees on the way up to the slide
View from the lift
(Our hotel is the one closest in the foreground.
Great location!)
Some serious ping pong

Aunt Dawn tried to teach him the rules.

A little grub by the pool

Goofing around

"Why play in the pool when there's
a perfectly good puddle right here!?"

Soon after getting in the pool in the above picture, we were told they needed to shut it down and clean it. The problem seemed to be in the kiddie end. We got out quickly of course. :)

We decided to move the party up to our room in
our giant tub and enjoyed a little family swim there.
Why waste all that effort of getting everyone in their swimsuits?

On one of our nightly strolls to get the best candy apples

A few other things went wrong that definitely put a damper on the trip, but we still had fun.

I'm sure we'll go to MountainSide again someday. We really love it there!

One Way to Get a Drink

I guess if you're thirsty enough (and you're only 1) anything goes.

A Time For Flowers

The past few weeks have been very stressful around here, and this week was particularly hard. My mom came down to help me out for the day yesterday to give me a hand with the kids and catch up on the cleaning around here. While we were out running errands she insisted on buying me some roses, something she said always helps her feel better. I must say, I love having fresh flowers on the table. They are a nice pick-me-up. Thanks again, Mom!

Thankful Thursday

It's been a busy, busy week for us!

1. Our first family vacation! Even though everything didn't go smoothly (we have two kids, what did I expect?) at least we can now say we've FINALLY gone on a family vacation! I have a ton of pictures I'm anxious to share but just haven't found the time yet. Look for them soon, but here's a preview:
2. My high school reunion. I debated for a while whether or not to go to this, but in the end I went. There were only a handful of people there who I cared to see, but it was still worth going just to see them. Jossy had the time of her life eating cookies and ice cream til 10 PM when we finally left. :) Dan even had fun chatting with my friends' husbands. Matty was not invited simply because I didn't feel like chasing a rambunctious 4-year-old around all night.

One of the few pics I took

Ice cream queen

3. The kids playing together this morning. Matty and Jossy played by themselves in his room this morning for about 2 hours! It was amazing! 2 hours playing happily together with no fighting is unprecedented!

4. Slow internet. My internet is incredibly slow lately for no known reason and driving me insane!!! So why am I thankful for it? Slow internet is better than NO internet, which I've also been forced to endure.

5. Children's Motrin and Tylenol. Matty had a bad fever on our vacation (great timing, eh?) and Jossy's been miserable today with a runny nose. I'm thankful that there's at least something I can do to help them feel better. I'm so thankful for easy access to medicine.

6. A healthy fetus. My sister is about 10-11 weeks pregnant with her 2nd (via IVF) and had a bleeding scare this week, but she found out everything's fine with the baby. Matty never lets us forget to pray for Aunt Ardice and her baby.

7. Calmness during tantrums. Matty threw a royal fit today at bedtime. We had let him stay up late so that we could all enjoy a walk to the library, but apparently sleep was probably more needed for him. He was screaming and crying and fighting us just to get him to wash his hands after using the toilet! Normally his fits really hit a nerve with me, but for some reason (aka divine intervention) today I felt calm. When he seemed to be reaching a peak of tantrum, I gave him a hug and told him over and over how much I loved him, even when he wasn't being good. It actually calmed him down! (At least for a bit...) I'm thankful for those little blessings of calmness from my Heavenly Father when I could so easily be upset and angry.

The Albertson's Cake

Since so many of you asked about the free cake from Albertson's, I thought I'd share with the group. My friend tipped us off to it (thanks, Sandi!). You just go into the bakery a few days before you need it and tell them you want the free baby's first birthday cake. You get an 8" single layer cake, no other purchase necessary. (When I got Matty's free cake from Walmart years ago, I had to buy a big cake to go with it.) You get to choose what's written on it, but not the design. That's it. Hope that helps someone. :)

City of Fun?

Went to the "City of Fun" carnival tonight at our local park. It's set up right now for our city's yearly celebration. Even though we've been here nearly 5 years, we've never gone. We thought this year Matty might enjoy it, and boy did he! Poor kid has never been taken to Lagoon or anything like that, so he thought the rides were awesome. Little problem though, they cost like 2-4 tickets each, and tickets are a buck a piece! That's a little much to me. So we only bought him 10 tickets. He had fun using them . . .
. . . until he decided he was having too much fun to bother telling Mom and Dad that he needed to use a bathroom. So we walked a pee-soaked boy home for a bath without getting to use our last ticket. He was NOT happy, but frankly neither was his mommy. I guess it was fun while it lasted . . . all 20 minutes of it.

Trouble Maker

Jossy is our little trouble maker. Matty even tells strangers, "This is my sister Jossy, and she's a stinker sometimes." The other day I thought she might be up from her nap because she'd been asleep for so long, but all was quiet. So I waited a few more minutes until I thought I heard something. I went back to my room and found this:

(Notice the tissues stuffed behind the crib, too.)

It was so nice of her to pull them out so that when I'm in a hurry I don't have to. What a sweetie.

Now if only it wasn't my last box of tissues in the house. . .

Thankful Thursday

1. Silly sleepers.
2. Being there to say goodbye.
3. New meaning to a booster seat.

4. A baby who thinks it's funny to dunk herself in the tub face first.
6. Hugging siblings.

5. Answered prayers. Sorry, don't have a pic for this one. :)

Seattle or Salt Lake???

Really, I'm not quite sure where I live anymore.

I grew up in Portland and love the rain, but it would be nice to see the sun once in a while. That's not too much to ask, is it?

Farewell Elder!

My younger brother Brandon gave his mission farewell address today. He did a FANTASTIC job. We had a nice open house afterward with good food and good company. He goes into the MTC this Wednesday. I'm so excited for him, but I'm going to miss him a ton!

Such a drama king!
Jossy loves playing in the doorway
smashing her face on the window.
The kids are definitely going to miss fun Uncle Brandon.
My brothers. Why be serious when you can play???
Never too old for a pillow fight.
4 of us siblings together. Our sister Ardice had already
left when we pulled out the cameras, and our sister Monica
couldn't make it. Maybe in 2 more years we'll get us all together!