Justin's mom was able to come and stay with us for the past two weeks. We had so much fun with her and were sad to see her leave!!! She came, crossing her fingers that she would be eligible for corrective eye surgery, which thankfully she was able to get. Everything went well and she is glad to have it behind her!
We went to a bronze statue exhibit depicting the life of Christ at the visitor's center in Kirtland. It was beautiful. It will be here through May and we are definitely going back. We are so lucky to have Kirtland so close to us!! We also made a stop at the Kirtland temple to snap a picture of Flat Stanley for the Well's kids to see!! Stanley didn't like getting out of the car and taking a picture in 10 degree weather though!!
We went to the Rainforest, an indoor exhibit at the zoo. I wanted to get a picture of Jack in front of this huge monkey, and this was the best I got...nice. :)
We went to the Children's Museum. The water and the sand were Jack's favorite parts. It is fun to see his little brain go to work with all the new toys. I also love to see his reaction around other kids. It makes me laugh.
Jack and Grandma doing the weather forcast.
We also went to the Great Lakes Science Center. It was so cute! Very clean, and a ton of stuff to do. This ball pit was Jack's favorite. I think he played in it for over an hour! I'm sure we will be getting a yearly pass here. It was so nice to get out with the cold weather and have so much fun!
We made a TON of bread and homemade pizza, cinnamon rolls, and this yummy cream cheese braid. I forgot to take a picture of the finished product, but just imagine it cooked with frosting on the top!! So yummy! We are all five pounds heavier after these two weeks of delicious food! It's back to the gym on Monday!! :)
Denise wanted a picture with all of us right before we left because it was the last time she would get to see Jack. She left early this morning before he was awake...Notice the tears in her eyes. :)
Here we are waiting for it to start.
I was a little nervous, because I love the movie so much and I wasn't sure if it would be the same or if I would like it as much. It was really cute, and the singing was great. The movie is good, but there is something about a live musical that I love. We had so much fun! It was the best birthday present and completely unexpected.
And then when we got home, Suzy and Spencer had made a cake while we were gone (I'm not sure how much Spencer actually participated...) and brought over some ice cream. They even sang Happy Birthday.
Thanks guys for being such good babysitters and for the YUMMY cake!!
Here is Jack's room after we got it all rearranged with his bed (BEFORE he starts playing in it and pulling everything out!). I love his cute little bed. It just makes me laugh to think of him being so old and sleeping in it. Now we want to refinish all of the furniture, but I'm not looking forward to doing it. You always think these "little projects" are going to be no big deal and it always ends up taking twice as long as you anticipated. Oh well, hopefully it will look cute when it's all done!
About a week ago, Justin and I decided to take down Jack's crib and put him in his toddler bed. I was a little nervous at first, but Jack was so excited and kept talking about his big boy bed. The first night took us about an hour or so to get him to bed, and the next night a little less. I was pretty happy until the third night when he just would not stay in his bed for anything. I kept thinking, "Why did we do this?!" After taking him back to his bed about 50 million times (it sure felt like that many!) we finally just shut the door. He can't open his door yet so he had no way of coming out of his room. He stood at the door banging on it and cried for a couple minutes and then climbed back up on his bed and went to sleep...go figure. We should have done it that way from the beginning! So now we just say goodnight and close the door. Sometimes he still comes to the door just to check if we accidentally left it open, hoping that he can get out. But as soon as he realizes that it is shut he crawls back up and goes to sleep.
We laid his crib bumper across the floor in case he fell off, which has only happened once.
The other night, we were upstairs rearranging Jack's room since we had put his bed up and taken down his crib. All of a sudden we hear the fire alarm go off. So we run down stairs to see why and our whole bottom floor was a little smokey and totally smelled like fire. We were running around trying to see what was burning and we couldn't find anything but we realized the smell was coming up through the vents. Our maintenance guy had been working on our furnace that day so we start getting really nervous. I run down to the basement to see if I could find where the fire was but found nothing. Still nervous, I call 911 and they send the fire department over just to check it out and be safe. We live right down the street from the fire department so they showed up in about five minutes with lights, sirens, and everything! And at first they went the wrong way down our street. eventually they found us and I'm sure all the neighbors were wondering what the heck was going on. We were babysitting Lily that night and both of them were glued to the window saying "Wow! Cool!"
Justin and I had a ton of fun, but Jack preferred to watch all the other people go down the hill, instead of going down himself. He was all smiles until we had him sit on our lap to start heading down the hill. It was kind of a big hill and there were so many people there, maybe it just scared him a little. It was still fun though. I think I will take him again on a week day when everyone is in school and see if he likes it any more.
Justin has a long weekend and I wanted to go sledding again but it has been WAY too cold! Thursday night it was -15 degrees and I think it warmed up to about zero during the day on Friday. Right now my computer says 10 degrees, but it is currently windy and snowing. We have been under a wind chill warning all day. This morning they said the wind chill was about 20 below. I don't think we will be going out to play this week!!
