One of many

I'm looking forward to many more nights over the years of tucking Matthew in after falling asleep in a book. I hope he always keeps his love of reading.

I told him he could look at one more book (after reading several with him) and when he was done I would come tuck him in. This is not what I expected, but I thought it was adorable!

Utah and other things

Little miss Hailey is getting so big! She wants to crawl so bad but she is just not quite there yet. It takes a lot of arm strength to hold that hefty body up!

I sold my single jogger/carseat combo so we had to get Hailey a new carseat. It's amazing how much entertainment children can get out of a box!

Friday the kids and I rode to Utah with my parents (Curt was busy hunting and going on a school field trip). We stayed until Saturday evening helping Vicky and Kurt move into their new home and celebrating Adessa's birthday! We got to stay at Lance and Kara's and that was really fun except for the part where Matthew gagged and puked because he didn't want to eat the tortilla I made him....sorry again Kara! I didn't get any pictures at Kara's because we got there really late and I left the camera in the truck and we were out as quick as we got breakfast down us in the morning to go help Vicky and Kurt move into their new place. But we had a lot of fun there! They made us a yummy breakfast even!

Just before my mom picked us up from home Matthew cut his foot on the door. You would think he'd chopped the whole toe off the way he cried about it! It was a big deal until Matthew got to show it to Jexten. It was all better once Jexten said "That's too bad Math, that's too bad!" None of the rest of us could console him! Jexten just has a way with cheering Matthew up!

And Adessa sure has a way with Hailey!

The backyard at the new house is so much fun. Jexten called it his forest. It had some berries that Matthew kept calling blueberries. They picked them and threw them at the shop! It kept them busy for a long time.

Grandpa Kit got to "entertain" the kids for a while so the girls could unpack some boxes.

When Matthew and Jexten were done throwing blueberries they played for a long long time in all the empty boxes. I made them a box fort but that lasted about just long enough to take a few pictures and then the fun was in demolishing it. BOYS!

I sure like Vicky's new house and I think it has a lot of potential. I wish I could have helped more, but mostly I was just there to "rummage through her stuff" hahahaha (mom and vicky know what I mean)

Just More Ducks

Curt and Matthew had something nasty today (they were up almost all night throwing up) but they started to feel a little better this evening, so we went for some fresh air. When I'm sick fresh air always makes me feel a little bit better.

*While Daddy's Out*

Curt went hunting Friday evening, so I talked my parents into going to the park with me and the kids! We had Matthew's favorite "Pizza in the park picnic" and rode the carousel and did a little swinging and hunting for "hocus pocus" (have you seen Frosty the Snowman? Hocus Pocus is the name of the rabbit. Matthew had an obsession with that movie last Christmas season and he still hasn't forgotten.)

I didn't get many pictures of Matthew because, like I said before, he was off hunting Hocus Pocus with Gpa K most of the time :)

We did have some fun on the carousel (Hailey's first ride. She wasn't sure what to think of it and just gave the same perplexed expression the entire time as pictured below) and the swings!

TOUGH JOB

Eating is hard work.

poor little chubba

I made a cake for ya

Matthew yelled down the stairs while playing in his bedroom and said "Mommy, come ere. I made a cake for ya!"

"It's for your birthday. See, you like it?"

I had no idea the kids had so many blankets mingled with a few of the toys until I saw the pile they made on the floor. Matthew still likes to make piles, but now they have names like "cake" or "fort." still a mess though. At least he made this one with me in mind :)

Improvement

Hailey had a shaky few days where she would be sitting up and then lean too far to the side and fall over. I couldn't figure out what her deal was because she has been sitting up really good now for quite some time. Then she started to figure out this pose.

I realized she's trying to expand her boundaries and move a little. She still does not want to crawl, but she will sit like this and inch her way around on her buns! I'm sure it will only be a matter of time and she'll get to the crawler position and find out how much easier it is than scooting.

a piece of heaven

Hailey is a thoughtful child. I assume she's pondering. Maybe remembering Heaven.

Curt saw these moose yesterday while hunting. He said there were a couple of cow moose too.

Matthew is kind of an all or nothing type of kid. He's either really happy, or really grumpy. He is either really hungry, or so not hungry you have to beg to get him to eat his dinner bite by bite. He demonstrated that once again with his toys. He is usually on the happy end when it comes to Hailey, but for some reason the other morning he REALLY did not want to share his toys with his sister. I told him he needed to change his attitude and be nice to her because she absolutely loves him and she's just a baby. So then he did the complete flip side of course and shared EVERYTHING with her. I had to stop him after the pile got so big because I didn't want to lose her in it! :) They had a lot of fun with this though.

We have some mooching ducks living in the canal by our complex preying off the all of the kids' love of "feeding the ducks." Matthew is no exception. He LOVES those ducks!

And again Hailey just thinks Matthew's funny no matter what he does. She was laughing at him throwing the tortilla at the ducks.

Matthew's new obsession is the Cat in the Hat. I mean he has ALWAYS loved loved LOVED Dr. Seuss books, but now that they air 'The Cat in The Hat Knows a Lot About That' on PBS he is the happiest kid on the planet at 8:30 am. He also loves playing all of their games on pbskids.org.

On one of our walks the other day (I think it was that same day we fed the ducks actually) two teenage kids were headed the opposite direction. As they neared Matthew turned around to me and said "I've seen those before!" and I knew he was talking about the kids but I didn't want to be rude so I just kind of nodded and didn't say anything. The boys were dressed, you know, typical punk. They had the shaggy hair and the usual baggy too big punk clothing. So I waited until they passed and were out of earshot and I asked matthew where he had seen them before. He said, "On the...I can't remember...the transformers." I said "Transformers? Like the robots?" and he said "NO! the things on the computer!" and then it clicked. He has been playing the game "Thing 1 and Thing 2's WEATHER transformer" on the computer! He was calling those two boys thing 2 and thing 1. Oh how funny.

Another funny now not so funny then thing matthew did the other night: Curt was hunting. I was trying to get hailey to bed, so I turned on The Wiggles for Matthew and popped him some popcorn. When I came back popcorn was scattered EVERYWHERE in the living room! I lost it and said "WHAT HAPPENED?" Matthew then took a handful and said "I squished it and THREW it!" as he demonstrates by throwing that handful. I was so hopping mad! So I put him in his bedroom and left him there screaming (like he always does when he's in trouble) and got out the vacuum. Hailey is deathly afraid of the vacuum and it woke her up so while I was quickly vacuuming up the mess both of my kids were up screaming in their rooms (I can only imagine what the neighbors thought). So I went and got Hailey, and then I got Matthew out of his room and talked to him about it and everyone eventually settled down. Curt came home, I got Hailey back to sleep, matthew got a bath and just before I was putting him to bed I said "I'm sorry I got mad at you Matthew." So he replied with, "I'm sorry I got in trouble. I'm sorry I got caught."

The sincerity in his big brown eyes showed me that he really meant it. and just that. he was sorry he got caught :)

and on a side note the huge scab on his forehead is a rug burn from an extreme game of wrestling with daddy. boys!

Together

We have had so much fun this last week that Curt has had off. His last day of work was aug 31st and school starts this thursday for both of us (I'm taking 7 online credits). We have been seriously cramming the week with as much activity as we can! We love it when Curt's home with us!

jammin' with the guitars

For family night we made a trip to the sand dunes. Can you believe that I have lived here almost 5 years and I have never been to the St. Anthony sand dunes?!!!

we will be going back for sure!

It's the ultimate sand box for Matthew!

Sunday Chillin'

aaaaaah, Sundays are a day to worship and rest.

and hang out with the family

TRYING to be grumpy after waking up from naps

practicing (encouraging) the locomotion skills.

we love our Sunday walks (after the wind settles down, even though it was ridiculously frigid!)

Hailey has finally accepted to drink something out of the bottle! Just juice, but it's a start. She laid here on the floor chugging this juice down.

My baby's first year is going by so fast. We went to a neighbor's 1 yr old birthday party today. I just kept thinking that it won't be long and I'll be throwing another one of those! ahhh!

Gray's Lake

We went to Gray's lake area (which is not a lake by the way. it is a marshy grassland place.) to find some more fossils! Curt's been really fascinated with fossils lately and I have to say that I rather enjoy the "hunt" as well. I would be happy going out and doing anything though, as long as it's outdoors and somewhere we can take the kids for an adventure! And as long as we don't run into any bears!!

Matthew and Hailey like looking for fossils too! They were fighting over the same outrageously awesome discovery here. hahaha No just kidding. Actually Matthew took it upon himself to make sure that Hailey didn't pick up small rocks and put them in her mouth. He's such a good big brother.

After that we just looped on over to Blackfoot reservoir

Curt caught this beautiful Monarch Butterfly for his bug collection. It's a lot bigger than this picture makes it look I guess. I need to take a picture of his collection one of these days. It's amazing!

It was a lot of driving on long bumpy dirt roads. Our toyota now sounds as "good" as it looks after hitting a dirt dike and popping a hole in the muffler...but the kids were really good!

We saw a whole bunch of these UGLY but cool Turkey vultures. We also saw a fox run right in front of us.

It was a very fun, but very long day!!!

Individual play time

I make sure to give each of the kids a certain amount of time each day to do whatever they want to do (with obvious limits. it has to be constructive!) without me interrupting. I think it encourages self dependence and leaves room for personal growth. Matthew almost always chooses pbskids.org if I list it amongst his choices (which is also okay because I also enforce "room time" every day where he gets a chance to play in his room with his imagination with or without me.) Since Hailey isn't old enough to choose I chose for her to have toy time today. She gets this a lot throughout the day anyway, but it doesn't hurt to have it all alone here where she can explore her toys on her own without me holding them up, shaking them, making funny squeaky noises or anything else annoying and without Matthew running through the middle of it or randomly picking up and throwing her toys.

I thought they looked so cute I wanted to get a "good" picture of them today. Keep trying is all I can say! One of these shots I'll get it!

My parents put in a brand new sandbox yesterday! We went over to test it out today while Curt worked on the car. It was a hit!

Matthew played and Hailey giggled at his funny "bury the bone" game. It took some digging on my part afterwards to find all of the toys he buried.

whew, long day!

having two kids is so exhausting but so rewarding!!

Bonus: they both stayed in the same outfit all day long! That means no major spills or other incredible messes, blowouts, spitups, mudpies.....NO EXTRA LAUNDRY!!!