I want to be Church

I just wanted to share a funny story about Jackson. Jackson has begun to pretend to be different things and wants to be called by that throughout the day. The other day he came out of his room and told me that he wanted to be church. I was confused and told him that we did not have church that day, just a day at home. He said no, I want to be church. I told him I didn't know what he meant, and he told me that he needed Daddy's tie. I gave him Kurt's tie and he went and got a church shirt out of his closet and his church pants and shoes. He put them all on and then came out and said "there I'm church." I then told him to go sit down for lunch and he told me, "no, I'm not Jackson call me church, I'm church. " So I had to call him church for the rest of the day. Where do they get this stuff.

Snowman Day

I finally completed, what might be my most proud accomplishment of my mommy life... snowman jammies. If you understood how much my son loved jammies you would understand how excited I was to give these to him. Since I didn't make the original deadline of Dec 1st as planned I decided to make a whole cool day of it called snowman day. And since we live in a place where snowmans don't exist this is as close as we are going to get for snowman day.

Jackson had school that day so I sent him to school with a snowman sandwich and snowflake cutouts of white cheddar cheese. When he got home I gave him his jammies which turned out to be pretty big on him, so I need to take up the arms and legs. He thought they were pretty cool at first.

We had snowman cupcakes and drank milk from a cool snowman cup.

Unfortunately the activities I had planned did not happen since I had to babysit a friend of his and Annabelle refused to nap and was truly high-maintenance that day.

About 45 minutes after he had them on he came out of his room hot and sweaty from playing and annoyed about the long legs and sleeves and told me that he wanted to change. I said "oh, let's keep your cool new jammies on". He said "I don't like them" and I said "oh, jackson mommy made those jammies for you." He replied, "oh, I'm sorry mommy, don't be sad (pause) but I don't like them." Crushing. Maybe when they fit they will be the hit I had hoped for.I then rebounded by making snowman pancakes with sausage (while holding the still fussing Annabelle in one arm) on my special snowman plate and a few snowman books before bed. Ever have one of those days that you visualize in your mind as being so great and it turns out not at all as you planned... snowman day.

Under the tree

Whenever Annabelle is quiet we know where she is. First she will lay there and stare up at the lights and then when she decides she's ready she suddenly attacks the tree and pulls down lights, branches and ornaments. This very unsafe light intanglement happened in moments after a diaper change. Don't worry she really is quite supervised I promise.

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas everyone! Sorry to all who were waiting for a card and didn't receive one. We decided to save some money this year by forgoing Christmas cards. Here are the pictures that we took as possibilities for the cards that we did not buy, so Merry Christmas, here's your card! I have to be honest and say that the two good ones were snapped by Kurt as it seems I can take 10 without a result and every time Kurt snaps one it is perfect.

Ok, Annabelle doesn't look great here but I thought Jackson looked cute. I can't believe it's only a week until Christmas! Where has the time gone this month? I hope everyone is enjoying the season and takes time to slow down and enjoy the last week, as I am desperately trying to do.

rolling, rolling, gone......

Annabelle has begun to roll around everywhere. At first I thought that it was random, but now I realize that she is rolling towards toys that are across the room and will get very frustrated if a table leg or toy interupts her path. Today she ended up in the bathroom in 2 minutes flat and then five minutes later I couldn't find her and she was under the coffee table which was pushed up against the wall. When did she get so big?

Then of course sibling rilvary. By the way this is not from Halloween he just wears this all of the time.

I don't know why this is so dark, I don't think some of you will be able to see it. I have a new computer and I'm trying to figure it out. Will try to edit later.

More Halloween pictures finally

painting pumpkins

Jackson and his friends at his school Halloween party.

His teacher Miss Melissa and his friend.

Trick or treating with a large group. We constantly heard him saying, "what about me..." and "you forgot me".... Mob mentality I guess.

Oh my, all the candy I want.

Not a pose, this is really what happened when given free reign.

Annabelle's first adventure

Well, we have a new computer now so I don't have my pictures loaded yet, but I thought that I would write a post about our trip to Utah. Annabelle and I ventured to Utah last Wed. night to go to my cousin Rachel's wedding on the 15th. So off we went with Annabelle securely in her sling. The day started off on the wrong note with my airline switching to a new terminal the day before, which wasn't that big off a deal it just meant lots of extra walking with a baby in a sling, an overloaded diaper bag containing anything I could possibly need (including extra clothes for me just in case), and a suitcase that turned out to weigh 50.5 lbs. I found this out when I trekked over to the new gate and was told that my suitcase was overweight. After staring at him and politely reminding him that it was .5 lbs, and then asking him to weigh it again, it weighed 50 this time and we were off.

To all of you who hate to travel next to children, please remember that children are people too and given that the average women is bearing children for around 10 years of her life, we cannot be expected to remain at home in our houses for ten years of our lives. We all know it's annoying, but please don't look directly at us, roll your eyes, sigh loudly and then say "well I guess I'm the winner." It really makes us feel awkward. As a mother I know I'm biased but I have to say that my baby was especially cute and good on that flight in spite of the meanie sitting next to us. We then moved on to our next flight which was three hours long, after 2 min. of crying she slept the entire flight. Our whole journey house to house took 13 hours and she was such a trooper, smiling most of the time.

We had fun staying with Jane, Ella, and Matt although Annabelle didn't do much sleeping. Jane was a doll with Annabelle and constantly called to me to do things or see things by requesting that "Monique's house" come too, as this somehow had become my full name. It was great to see family and let Annabelle spend some time with her Nana. My cousin was married in the Bountiful temple which was beautiful.

Flying home was a little louder, as Annabelle had developed an ear infection the day before flying home. Thankfully, I sat next to the perfect traveling companion who told me when she sat down that she had eight grand kids all under the age of eight and that she loved kids. Ahh, thank goodness. She was a godsend, taking things out of my diaper bag and packing it back up during the four hour flight, and just smiling at me when Annabelle was screaming rather than glaring at me. After a 1 1/2 hour ride home, we were home again! It was a crazy but fun five days and it went better than I could have hoped with a four month old in tow every where I went. Pictures to follow shortly.....

Happy Halloween

Here are a few pictures of my kiddo's dressed up as Mickey and Minnie, more to come when I can get my computer to cooperate...

A fun day at the pumpkin patch

Here are a bunch of pictures from our fun day at a local pumpkin farm. They have a big wooden playground in cool shapes like a train, ship, and castle. They have an area to ride trykes and gross stuff like fried pickles. They have a deal where if you pick your pumpkin from the field and it is bigger than 30 lbs. it's only 15.00 no matter the size, so it was Dustin's mission to find the biggest he could, and he did pretty well at around 65 lbs. It was our first really crisp fall day and it was so fun.

Dustin's pumpkin.

My little pumpkin.

My cake made with love for all to enjoy but me. I have discovered that I still love to bake even if I can't eat any of it.

First taste of a Reese's

The pictures say it all. Jackson has discovered what candy is.

Crying Cousins

I had two sets of jammies, one that was 0-3 and one that was 6-9 so I thought it would be funny to put them in the same sleeper and show how different they were in size. They ended up looking far more similar in size in these pictures than they actually were. Annabelle was about 12 weeks here and Patrick was 6 weeks old. Patrick liked to cry alot at this age and we all thought he was going to be the difficult baby, turns out he's an easy going baby whose a breeze to babysit, and my smily baby turns into a screaming lunatic when anyone else takes care of her for more than about 4 seconds. Poor daddy.