Super Baby and the bouncy bed

James has turned into a very wiggly child, especially during diaper changes. It often happens that I can't manage to get his clothes back on before he scurries away in his turbo-crawl. So many morning he ends up wearing his pj's like a cape. Its pretty cute. One of James other favorite things is to play on our bed. He get on one knee and one foot and bounces like a mad man and laughs and laughs. He throws himself around on the bed with the biggest grin on his face, and climbs up on down the piles of pillows we make. I absolutely love it! It is such a fun play time for us, and his giggle is about the cutest thing ever.

Beth loves to play "horsey," I suppose there aren't a lot of kids who don't like that game, but Beth loves it! I crawl around with a wiggly 2-year-old on my back and we chase James around. He has recently discovered how fun it is to be chased (and caught). I feel like I don't spend a ton of time playing with the kids, not as much as I should anyway, but we have some pretty precious times together playing these games.


Some days my kids are impossible and hard, and Beth is beating on James ever time I turn around. But they sure love eachother, and I love them so much. James always gets up before Beth in the morning and he will sit in the hall staring at her bedroom door waiting for his friend to get up. I'm am so happy that they are good friends and that they are so close. I love my siblings, and I had a great childhood, but I do sometimes feel like I missed out a little bit because I didn't have siblings close to my age. So now I live vicariously through my crazy children and I love it. What joy they bring!

Nothing really....

I don't really have much to post about, but it just feels very wrong that I haven't posted in over a week! The kids have had terrible yucky coughs/colds, so we have pretty much been hold up in our house for a week. They seem to be on the upswing luckily, so hopefully we will be over this soon. It really is no fun! They are pretty sweet and cuddly at least, which I love, as long as they aren't wiping their snot on me! :) I am pretty ready for this winter to be over since it has been such a hard illness winter for us. Healthy kids would sure be a nice change of pace. I can't handle being stuck in the house very well. I have to get out with the kids or I go a little nuts, and so do they. Anyway, here are a few pictures of my sweet kids. I can't get over how big they are getting lately. I don't feel old enough to have kids this big! Or kids at all for that matter...

Valentine's Day

I thought I would post a few happy things about our Valentine's celebrations. Ryan woke up early yesterday to try and surprise me with breakfast in bed and flowers and a card. Of course, James woke up early and ruined the surprise a little bit, but it was delicious and the flowers were beautiful anyway!
Then here are the pictures of my new outfit and hair. You can't even really tell that I cut the bangs. They aren't drastic, just a little something to give some shape around my face and try to undermine my Davidson forehead. I like them so far.
Sorry its not a fabulous photo, but it'll have to do! This morning has gone better then yesterday did. James slept in and Ryan decided to work from home to avoid any more time spent on the freeway after the drive home he had yesterday. I made breakfast for Ryan, but I forgot to take a picture of it, bad blogger, bad! I made eggs and Heart shaped toast. It was cute and all valentiny. :) So Happy Valentine's Day everyone!

Oh, here is a picture of my first attempt to style my hair curly with the bangs.

All dressed up with no where to go.

Ryan and I were planning to go out and celebrate Valentine's day a little early tonight. We've had a babysitter planned for over a week (that's a big deal for us). I bought a new outfit. I got my hair done today (more layers cut and I went for the bangs). The kids got good naps, everything was on schedule and then the snow hit. It came down and down in blowing nastiness. I got stuck in it coming home from getting my hair done, but poor Ryan is still stuck in it. He left work over 90 minutes ago and he is still a good 20 minutes from home on a normal traffic day. We gave up on our plans long ago. I ordered a pizza. Ryan might not even make it home for warm pizza. Oh well....nothing we can do about a ruined evening now. Hopefully we'll get to celebrate another day.

**Ryan left work just after 4pm and got home at 8pm!!! It usually takes him 25 minutes!!! Poor guy, not the evening he had in mind.**

Happy Birthday Dion!

Today is my brother Dion's 35th Birthday! My sister Debbie beat me to the punch and already did a post about him, but I had one planned, so I'm doing it anyway! I don't have any pictures of him on this computer, but I have a lot of favorite moments with Dion to share on his birthday.

Dion is the closest sibling to me in age, he is still 9 1/2 years older than me, so its still a big gap, but he is the only sibling that I feel like I got to spend a significant amount of time at home with. So here are a few of my favorite memories of you.

• I remember helping you out with the paper route in Albuquerque.
• I remember swimming with you in L.A.
• I remember riding on your bike with you when you would pick me up after school at the Y.
  
• I remember watching you work so hard on your little VW bug.
• I remember getting to finally ride with you in the bug.
• I remember singing "Here we go Cowboys" whenever we got in the bug.
• I remember waking you up with ice cubes and then running for my life.
• I remember watching you and all of your high school buddies in awe and thinking you were so cool!
• I remember begging you to play and sing "Piano Man."
  
• I remember loving to go eat at Spaghetti Factory and having you be our waiter.
• I remember helping distract dad so you could make his priesthood line picture frame.
• I remember when you used to come lay on my bed every once and a while and tell me about a date you went on, that made me feel so special.
• I remember missing you so much when you left on your mission.
• I remember making that sweet ginger bread house and then throwing it off the balcony.
• I remember when we got snowed in so we went sledding and made that ice shoot through the front yard.
  
• I remember when you would take me to meet the girls you were dating in college. Man did I feel cool!
• I remember how excited you were when you wanted me to meet Summer.
• I remember helping you shop for rings for Summer, and how nervous the guys are the jewelry stores were to let me handle the diamonds, but how you insisted that I, as your advisor, had to okay any purchase.
• I remember how important you made me feel by making me a part of your proposal to Summer.
• I remember when you and Corey volunteered to be waiters for my dates in college.
• I remember all the great advice you gave me.
• I remember how nice you and Summer were to let me live with you after I graduated from BYU and didn't know what to do.
• I remember the time you took me out to dinner for no apparent reason.
• I remember seeing how strong you became with all the struggles with your kids health.
• I remember the many many great parties and meals we've had together, because no one likes a good party more than you.
  

I remember all of the millions of small things that you have done for me thoughout our lives and I am grateful for you every day. I hope you have a wonderful 35th birthday and many many more. We need to have one of those parties soon! I love you.

New Haircut

Today I got a new haircut and color! I haven't done this for myself for quite some time. Like I mentioned a few posts ago, it was my gift to myself when I reached my 30 pound goal to get a bit of a make-over. Ryan was really nervous about it. He always is when I get antsy to do something to my hair. I was really excited because I have been so bored with my hair and it just gets tied in a knot on the top of my head every day because I don't know what to do with it and its so boring. So here is a before picture. (my hair was in a braid all day before this, thus the weird texture)

I hadn't had more than a trim in a long long time, so this is way over due! And the after:



I love the cut. Its not too drastic, I probably would have gone shorter, but to spare my husband I think its just right, I can still put it up if I want to, but its good for going curly or for straightening. The only thing I'm a little unsure about is the color. I asked the girl to put some red and blonde in my hair, just for a little something different. I didn't tell her how much of either color, just kind of let her go with it, and i'm practically a blonde! Okay, maybe i'm exaggerating. Its hard to tell in the pictures above, so I took a few picture of the top of my head to give you a better idea of the color.


I've never had quite this much color in my hair, definitely not this much blonde anyway! I like it, but I'm just not totally sure about it. The poor girl who did it could tell I was freaking out a little and offered to have my come back and add some more brown back in to darken it up a little. I told her to give me a few days to adjust and see what I think. I might adjust and decide I like it just fine, who knows!? It really is pretty, its just so different from my normal flat brown hair that I don't know what to think of my own refliection! The overall look is beautiful though and I'm happy I took an evening to pamper myself a little. Now I just need a new outfit to go with it...one that actually fits! (Oh, and do you think I should have her cut some shorter pieces in the front, you know those trendy side swept bang kinda things? or just keep the cut the way it is?)

Jazz Game

Monday afternoon around 3:30, Ryan called me to say that he had been offered some tickets to that night's Jazz game. I thought it sounded like fun, something different that we don't usually get to do, so I frantically started calling around for babysitters. Luckily our good friends Jenny and Asiel were willing to help out and we had a great evening! The tickets were amazing! Apparently some company that works with Move Networks gives these V.I.P. tickets as a perk every now and then and somehow it was Ryan's turn to get them. We went with another guy from Ryan's office and his wife. They were a really nice couple, we had a lot of fun. We were on the 4th row, mid-court. We are talking padded seats here people! Not only were they amazing seats (the tickets said $425.00), but they came with a parking pass, very important down town these days, a gourmet dinner at the ESO, and half-time snacks. This was the life! I don't think I can ever go to a Jazz game as a regular person again! It was a great game too. The Jazz won 110-88 against the Hornets. They hit a whole bunch of 3-pointers and we were like 10 feet away! The players were huge, the court looked tiny, and the basket looked really low from our vantage point! We took a few picture, but only from Ryan's camera phone since I forgot the real camera *doh*, he said he would upload the picture for me, so I will add them later. I wish I would have had the camera to take a picture of me standing on the court covered in confetti as I was at the end of the game! So fun! And the best part of this really fun evening was that it didn't cost us one cent! I love dates like that! Thank Asiel and Jenny for watching the kids! They were only going to watch them for the evening but they were sound asleep when we went to pick them up so they just stayed over night. They slept all night again. Beth even slept all night without her binky, I was so proud!

Playtime!

I love it when my kids play together. When I found out I was pregnant with James, I was worried that it would be a long time before my kids would be able to play together because they are so little. But Beth already makes up games for them to play. And James follows Beth around like a little puppy dog. They wrestle, and luckily James has the patience of saint so far and just giggles as his big sister pounds on him, and the bigger he gets, the more turns he takes in getting a little revenge. It makes me smile when they get each other laughing. There are even times when they disappear into Beth's room for 15 or 20 minutes and just play together quietly, and sometimes not so quietly. I love it. It gives me hope that they will be great friends throughout their lives. I always felt like I missed out just a little bit because I didn't have any close siblings. I am so glad my kids have that. It really is a little something special.

Here are a few other pictures I thought were cute from recent days.
James has started "kissing"

My sweet Beth

James is standing ALL THE TIME these days

Snow, Snow, and some more Snow!

As most of you well know. We have gotten some serious snow around here lately. We woke up to a major dumping yesterday! I thought I would share a few pictures. The above picture is the wreath I have hanging on our door. I know its a bit Christmasy, but a snowman and "Let it Snow" are definitely things that still fit in around here these days! As you can tell, he got covered in blowing snow. For those of you who have seen my house, you know that the snow was blowing around a lot to accomplish that! I tried to take lots of fun shots but not all of them turned out well enough to display how much snow there really was, but there is definitely a lot of white!!This is the view when you opened our front door yesterday morning. The wind blew the snow around so much that is saw several inches high against the door and a couple of feet high on the stairs. And for those of you who don't know, our porch is covered.

This is the view out our back door. The snow on our steps comes all the way up past the edge of the floor and the snow is almost as deep as the top of those steps all the way around. It is insanity! Beth wants to go out and play in the snow but I am afraid she would get lost in it. It is snowing again right now. Little tiny flakes, but snowing none the less! I'd say we are pretty set for water this year.

Weight Loss Update

So the latest in the weight loss saga at our house is another HUGE milestone! I have hit 30 pounds lost! Woohoo!! I am so excited about this. I took some pictures, They aren't great because I took them myself and I could only figure out how to get the timer to 2 seconds so I had to run, not much time to pose...but you get the idea! (Please ignore the messy house)

Those are the pants I blogged about a few weeks ago, and as you can sorta tell, they are getting big on me! Yay! My incentive to myself for getting to 30 pounds is a bit of a makeover, so I will take some more pictures after the transformation next week. :)

Ryan and I have had this bargain for some time that when I could wear the dress that I wore on our honeymoon that we would go on another cruise, and I got it on this week! I wasn't sure I would ever be able to wear it again because my ribs are wider after having babies, but it zipped! I was pretty darn excited! So if there is anyone out there who loves us enough to volunteer to take our kids for a week...