January in a nutshell

January has flown by so fast and my blogging efforts have been at a minimum. Justin takes the computer to school every day so I only have it at night or on the weekends and it seems I am never in the mood to do it at those times. Anyways, January has been a good month. It has been slow paced which has been a nice break after the busy holidays. We have spent a LOT of time indoors and in our pj's all day, which I enjoy. :) We did manage to go to a Cav's game last night while some friends of ours watched the boys. We were in the very LAST row!! This is the second basketball game I have been to and sat in the very last row. The game was exciting though and the Cav's ended up winning by one point!

Anderson has been growing by the second and getting cuter everyday. I love his smiles. He will just be sitting there and any time you look at him he gives you a huge grin! I love it. He looked extra cute for church today.

One bad thing about him getting older is that his hair is falling out!! I LOVE all his brown hair and now he has a totally bawled spot in the back and the rest is WAY thinner than it used to be. He still has some but not near as much as he did. Oh well....I still think he is pretty darn cute.

Is he cute or what?!

Since we have been spending so much time indoors, Jack has had to come up with new ways to entertain himself. One thing he loves to do right now is lay by Anderson or us, or even just by himself, under a blanket and snug. He is always getting his "soft blankey" or Anderson's "soft blankey" and cuddling up. Sometimes he reads books, sometimes he watches movies, and sometimes he pretends to take a nap. And for some reason when he does this, he tells me to take a picture of him and whoever he is laying with. I'm not sure why he loves it so much but he does this multiple times a day.

Jack's "soft blankey"

Anderson's "soft blankey"

What a cheeser!

Jack's next hobby he has discovered while being trapped inside all winter is taking pictures with my camera. He's getting quite good at it. :) He goes around taking pictures of everything from Anderson's chubby leg, the wall, the fridge, his toys, his blanket, me, Justin, the carpet...anything. He thinks he is pretty cool when he does it. Here is a few samples from his portfolio...

This would be Anderson's cute chubby leg.

I think we have some real talent here. :)

Yesterday Jack went to his friend Jackson's birthday party. It was a pirate party and everyone was supposed to come dressed up. I went through our drawers and this is what I came up with... complete with eyeliner facial hair, and frog boots. :)

Love the face

Jack has also started putting all of his toys in time out. Wolfy is there quite frequently. He will be playing and all of a sudden say "Hey! Don't hit me! You go to time out!" He has been saying a lot of funny things lately. The other day we were driving and we saw a deer. Jack said "Mom! Was that a reindeer or a kangaroo?!!" I wasn't aware that they looked so similar that you could mix them up. Then in the same car ride we saw a man running wearing blue and red with long spandex pants. Jack thought he was Spiderman. I just laugh all day at the things he comes up with. I would love to hear what else is going on in that little brain of his. When he gets in trouble and I am talking seriously to him, he says, "Mom, talk nice to me!" Or after we get upset with him he follows with..."Mom/Dad, are you sorry that you were upset to me?"

One of the more exciting things that has come from us staying home a lot is that Jack is now potty trained! Hooray! I love it.... most of the time. We still have our accidents but there hasn't been too many and it is far better than changing his nasty diapers everyday. He was really scared of the big toilet and wouldn't go until we got one of the little potties that sits on the floor. Gross, I know. We hated cleaning it out, but he learned really quickly and now he goes in the regular toilet. A while ago he had a day where he pooped in his undies twice. I was so upset the second time, I told him he could not watch his movie in the morning which is probably his favorite part of the day. We don't have TV so movies are the only thing he gets to watch. Anyways, the next day he was playing and this was the conversation he had with the toys...

Jack: I want to watch a movie.

Jack: No. You can't watch any movies today.

Jack: But I want to watch a movie!

Jack: Well, you shouldn't have pooped in your pants then. You can't watch any movies today because you pooped in your pants TWICE.

Man, he is good at repeating what I say!

One bonus of him being potty trained is that we get to see him in his cute undies!! I love it!

I love that little bum! I had to secretly take these pictures because the first time I tried he got mad at me that I was taking pictures of him with out his clothes. He does not like being without his clothes at all. I asked him to smile for me and the picture below is what I got. "No mom! I need my clothes on!!!" That's a typical whinny Jack face. He cracks me up!

So that's what we've been up to the past month. Minus a few little projects I have been working on that I will post when I am finished. I did a couple little sewing projects and we rearranged our bedroom. Finally!! I have loathed my bedroom for far too long and it is finally a peaceful place I would actually want to spend some time in. It's almost done. I need to make a trip to Ikea for one or two finishing touches. We are going there in a couple weeks so hopefully I find what I am looking for and I can post it soon!

Happy Winter!

Jack's dinner prayer

Dear Heavenly Father,

Thank you for this day. Thank you for our blessings.

Dear Heavenly Father,

Thank you for this day.

Thank you for our drinks and for our food.

Thank you that Mom could work on these fabrics.

Amen.

(I have been sewing a couple projects. It's so funny what he thinks of during his prayers!)

Snow Angels

It has been snowing non stop these past few days and Justin and Jack went out to take advantage and try to enjoy the cold. They made a cute snowman complete with cherry tomato eyes. We couldn't find any rocks and that was the best thing I could come up with to use. It has been snowing so much that now you can barely see his hat and scarf and he looks rather lopsided from all the extra snow falling on him. Jack was pretty proud of it though.

He is wearing two different gloves because his new gray and red ones were too thick and he couldn't hang onto the little shovel he had. He was "helping" Justin shovel the walkway. He wanted to bring a shovel of snow inside so we put it in the freezer. It's still there.

He has been watching Mickey's Christmas a lot lately and Goofy makes snow angels in it. So Jack wanted to make some of his own. I love the foot hand coordination he has! haha...

Photo and video editing at www.OneTrueMedia.com

From the mouth of Anderson

This little guy is at one of my favorite stages. He is smiling, laughing, and starting to interact with you. I love it. But I also love that he is still too little to crawl or roll all over the place. You just set him on the floor and he doesn't move. It's great. Here is a little clip of his cuteness...

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Christmas Fun

We had great Christmas this year! I just can't believe it has already come and gone. Isn't it crazy how fast it is over!? Anyways, let's get started...this is a LONG post! Above is Jack and Anderson hanging out on Jack's bed with his new Christmas pillow, which was part of an huge advent calendar that my mom did for our family. She had a gift for every day of December leading up to Christmas. Jack loved to open the presents each day, and it was fun to see what she had come up with. I can't believe she actually did it for everyone in my family. I am impressed Mom!! She said after this year, we are in charge of our own, if we want to continue it, which I think I will. It would be such a fun tradition.

The boys looked pretty handsome in their cute little sweater vests.

One of the days in the advent calendar had a gingerbread mix and candies to decorate them. I bet you can't guess which one is Jack's! :) Before we decorated them, Jack took one off of the plate and I told him to put it back. After I asked him to put it back on the plate, he ran off and bit a chunk off of the gingerbread man's head. I guess he thought if I was going to take it away from him, he better hurry and take a bite! He's such a good listener. :)

We also decorated gingerbread houses...well, graham cracker houses. It was much easier than making gingerbread.

This is mine. My snowman kind of looks Chinese.

This is Justin's...beautiful isn't it? It took him a few times to get it to stay together. He was going for the mansion house.

Here are all the masterpieces. :)

The house where they filmed "A Christmas Story" is in Cleveland. This was the first year we have gone out to see it. It is in the ghetto. I'm sure it probably didn't use to be the ghetto but it sure is now. They have a little museum and gift shop across the street where you can buy all kinds of leg lamps in all shapes and sizes. Everything was so EXPENSIVE!! There was a little leg lamp ornament that was $27! It was like 3 inches tall. And there was a pink bunny suit that was $110. It was crazy. There were leg lamp earrings, leg lamp ties complete with fringe, and a box of fudge with Ralphie's face that says "Oh Fuuuuddggee" across the front. You could even buy a huge inflatable leg lamp to put in your front yard. Who came up with this stuff and who in their right mind would buy that? We were laughing at all of the things you could buy. Justin had never seen the whole movie all the way through so we watched it a couple days before so he could get the full effect.

We spent Christmas Eve at the Mortensen's house. This is their little guy, Eli, that they just adopted. He is two weeks younger than Anderson. It is fun to see them together.

We had such a fun Christmas Eve. Part of the reason was we ate so much yummy food! Everything was super good. We had little activities for the kids, opened pj's, sang Christmas carols, read the Night Before Christmas, decorated cookies for Santa, played games, and just had fun.

This is Myrtle. She is in our ward and had no family here to celebrate Christmas with, so we had her come and get in on the festivities. We even had some pj's for her to open. She is a sweet lady.

I had to show a picture of Jack's nice bruise. He was standing next to a kitchen chair and talking to me when Jackson came around the corner really fast and accidentally ran into him. He smacked right into the edge of the chair and Jackson bounced off and hit the table. It was quite the crash. Jack instantly had a welt on his head. Poor little guy!

After we went home, we set out our cookies and milk and put the reindeer food on the porch. Jack didn't get in bed until 12:30 that night!

This is little Anderson just hanging out on Christmas morning. He slept all through the Christmas Eve festivities, and slept the whole time we were opening presents.

Christmas morning was great. We had to wait for Jack to wake up...he slept in until 10am which he has never done in his life. I guess going to bed at 12:30am will do that to a 2 year old. He loved opening everything and was excited that Santa had eaten his cookie he made for him. It was so fun to have him be so excited and to actually do Christmas in our own home. We missed family but truly enjoyed our first experience on our own. It was everything I was hoping for.

Photo and video editing at www.OneTrueMedia.com

Message From Santa

Jack received an extra special message from Santa this year! Click on the link to see what Santa had to say, it's pretty cool!!

http://portablenorthpole.tv/watch/ef80861f46b0347a531f16cf2eaf1a6f

We wish you a Merry Christmas!!

We went caroling with some people from church at the Hannah House at University Hospital. It took us two hours to sing to every patient that wanted us to. Every time we would leave a patient and go to the next, we would sing "We Wish You a Merry Christmas". Jack knows this song because of Mickey's Christmas movie and he would sing along every time. This video isn't the best but I LOVE how he says "Merry Christmas!" at the end. He was saying that to everyone he could find. It was so cute. He would say, "Mom, I'm going to go tell her Merry Christmas" as he ran off to talk to the nurse. We had a good time and felt good about lifting people's spirits that were there. A lot of patients cried and everyone thanked us for coming to sing to them. My heart went out to those people who will have to be in the hospital for Christmas. I hope they have family that will come and visit them. We told Jack that we were going to the hospital to sing Christmas songs to the people there so they would feel better. Hopefully he felt good about doing it too. :)

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Santa!!

Isn't he a cute Santa?

Santa came to our ward party this year! Jack was excited to see him, but showed little to no emotion when we actually went in. His mouth was full of candy cane and I think that might of had something to do with it. It's a huge step up from last year, where he was crying the whole time. I think last year's Santa was a little scary looking. This Santa is much cuter and looks much nicer. :) Here's a little video clip from it...

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Denise is back!

We've been lucky enough to have Denise come back for some more dental work and a quick visit. Jack has been totally spoiled with all of these visitors we've had over the past couple of months. We have had some one here or been out of town almost every day since Anderson was born. Jack LOVES having other people to entertain him besides just his mom and dad.

We went out to Kirtland to see the nativity exhibit and drove around to look at Christmas lights. When Denise was here last January, she taught Jack how to play "I Spy". He still plays it every day in the car and it's especially fun with Christmas lights. He's always in the back yelling, "Oh! I spy some more Christmas lights way high over there!"

And the highlight of the weekend (at least for me and Denise) was when we went to see WICKED.... AGAIN! Oh man, I cannot get enough of this show. I have seen it 3 times now and would go again in a heart beat. Denise had never seen it and when she asked if I would want to go again, I didn't even think twice about it. I love everything about it and I am so glad she wanted to go and see it!! Thanks for giving me an excuse to see it again Denise!!

Come back soon!