Oh what a wonderful holiday!

We got to go to Utah for 10 days this month for Christmas. It was so nice to be able to spend time with both our families and be in Utah again.

It was absolutely amazing how much it snowed there. I think it snowed all but maybe two days we were there. Mike's parents' house (where we stayed for this trip) is in Spanish Fork canyon, up in the mountains. So, they got a lot of snow. We definitely had a white Christmas:

And Mike did a lot of this (that pile of snow behind him to shovel was from one day!):

We spent Christmas Eve and Christmas morning with Mike's family. Here are the kids in their Christmas Eve pajamas:

And our family...:

I was so excited Christmas morning. Mike and I were up before the kids and I could hardly stand it! Here are the boys with their stockings:

And, in true Jordan fashion, he was most excited about the fruit snacks in there:

Here are the boys with their presents from Santa:

Jordan was so cute with his cars he got for Christmas (which were many). He kept arranging them on the piano - he loves lining them up everywhere, but this was so cute:

Evan got a little piano that he loved. I love this picture because you can see the action and his face is so focused:

We spent Christmas day and evening with my parents. I just like this picture of Mike goofing off with Evan:

Evan is such a sweet, beautiful child. Here he is enjoying a cracker with Grandma:

Unfortunately the time came to leave. Jordan was really cute in the car - he wanted his pacifier (which we let him have for the drive...why not!), his doggy and two cars to hold:

After all the snow we got, we were fortunate to have a clear drive home. It was so beautiful:

We hope you all had a great holiday too!

Where are we again?

Well, today was a surprising day. Not your average sunny, warm day in Vegas, that's for sure.

Here's what I saw when I looked out my window this afternoon...



Now, I know to many of you, it is just snow...



But this is Vegas! And our backyard is covered with snow!



Jordan and Evan enjoyed looking at it. To think, we didn't have to wait until we are in Utah for them to see snow after all!

The most stubborn child ever...and one of the cutest.

So, we've been going through the cry-themselves-to-sleep thing again with Evan. We did when he was younger and he was sleeping beautifully. Then he regressed...big time. So we decided a week ago to start the process again. But he is so stubborn. He literally stays up as long as possible. There have been nights that he is still going four hours after we put him down. Other nights we have caught him sitting up in his crib startling himself every time he starts to fall asleep. Last night, this is what we found. I'm not sure why he can't just lay down and sleep, but this was pretty cute.

Stories and updates about my boys

I can't believe how big my boys are getting. They are still so cute and doing more and more each day. I just thought I would write a few of them here.

We'll start with this cutie:



Jordan is such a talker. He says the cutest things. Here are some examples:

• Today he told me he wanted to cut his finger snails.
  
• When Mike tries to make a basket and misses Jordan says, "nice try Daddy!"
  
• He is so polite and says, "thanks mama" and "welcome mama" all day. He is also obsessed with saying bye to people. He just says it over and over and over.
  
• This past week he has started calling us Mom and Dad occasionally. I'm not sure how he got the idea to start doing that.
  
• Everything and everyone loves Jordan. I tell him that mama loves Jordan, Daddy loves Jordan, etc. and now everything loves Jordan. His doggy loves him, the Wiggles love him, and on and on. It is cute when he comes up with a new one.
  
• He always tells Evan good job when he does something. Today they were picking up blocks and Evan put one away and Jordan quickly said, "Good job Evan!"
  
• Jordan is really taking to the idea of being a boy. We tried to see if he knows the difference between boys and girls (he's still pretty clueless, but he knows that he is a boy.) Whenever we say that Jordan is something, like cute, or silly, or anything, he says, "no, Jordan boy!"
  
• Jordan has one classification for all kind of chips. The first chip that he knew of was chocolate chips (thanks Mike!) so now any kind of chip is a chocolate chip. We had some tortilla chips this weekend and he kept asking for more chocolate chips!


• I thought this video of him saying "oh my gosh" was cute. He fell on a block last night and was telling us about it:

Jordan loves to sing. His favorites are the church songs he learned from Mike (We are All Enlisted and Called to Serve), the Christmas song (we've been teaching him Jingle Bells, so he calls it the Christmas song), the alphabet (he's starting to learn it, so he likes singing it), I'm So Glad When Daddy Comes Home, and lots of others. Here is a video of him just spinning and singing the chorus to Called to Serve:

The other day we were going up to put Jordan in bed for a nap and there was a cricket on the stairs. He is a little nervous around bugs (which I am not really correcting right now because I'm paranoid of a scorpion getting in the house...) and so he started to get upset that the cricket was in the way. I told him it was okay and to hold my hand as we walked by. When we got passed he got so happy and said, "I did it, I did it!"

Now onto this cutie:


As you might gather from this picture, Evan is starting to walk. He is actually getting pretty good at it. He can take four or five steps and even steady himself when he gets wobbly. Hopefully he will be walking soon!

Evan is starting to say more and more sounds. When Mike asks him if he is ready for a bath he says, "ba, ba, ba!" Well, here's a video of it (yep, I was busy with the camera tonight!):

And last but not least:



Mike is at the end of another semester. He has been taking classes, seeing clients, working on his thesis, doing assessments, working at his assistantship, writing articles for publication, playing dad and husband, serving in the Young Men at church, and a ton of other little things. But he is doing everything well. Now that sounded cheesy, but true. So... in other news, he got a haircut. Nice, huh! (And, nice of him to pose for a picture without knowing what it is going to be used for! :))

Thanksgiving

We went to Utah for Thanksgiving last week and it was wonderful. The boys really enjoyed themselves and it was great to see both of our families. Jordan had a lot of fun with both sets of grandparents and loved playing with my parents' dogs. He kept calling their dog Abbie Happy. It was cute. Here are some pictures:

Here we are.

Evan loved getting into the cupboards. Isn't he cute?!

He didn't even have any turkey and he was crashing after dinner.

We went to see Mike's family too and the kids played ring around the rosie. They had so much fun doing it and I loved seeing Evan even participating.

I love this picture because you can see how each of the kids are having fun and laughing.


The boys were having so much fun that they kept falling asleep. Jordan never slept in his carseat before this trip!

Even fell asleep on the floor next to my mom when they were playing!

These pictures are from the drive up. We got going at 5 in the morning. Jordan was so cute and really excited. I just had to post these pictures because I thought he looked so cute that I wanted to get a picture, but a couple of them turned out pretty funny.

By the way, we kept the boys up all day on the day we drove back and then left at 6 and they both slept the entire way home. It was wonderful!

Sleeping cutie

Evan has been having a hard time sleeping lately because of his separation anxiety. The other night we kept him up until he fell asleep - cell phone in each hand. He loves cell phones, and he loves holding things, so I guess this was a good combo for him. I finally figured out that I could get him to take naps on the air mattress we have in his room, so he has been getting more sleep the past two days, so he is doing better! He still is extremely attached to me, but it is easier to be patient with him when he is less cranky and I'm getting small breaks!

A sweet night

We had our ward trunk or treat last night. It was a fun night for Jordan... well after we got his costume on he was okay. We trained him on what he needed to say:



Here are my cute boys all dressed up:





Jordan got a balloon and was absolutely fascinated by it:



Almost every time that Jordan got a piece of candy, he would pull it out of his basket and say, "eat now!" So, here he is enjoying the fruits of his trick or treating:

Hats off to ya!

Jordan took his coloring paper off the table today and started ripping it into hats for him and Evan: