Sunday, August 30, 2009

A conversation with Jordan

This morning Erica and I were upstairs getting ready for church and the boys were playing downstairs.  This is the conversation I had with Jordan when they came up:

Jordan: Are you happy Daddy?
Mike: Yeah... Are you happy?
J: We did something naughty downstairs.  Sorry about that.  But it's okay.
M: What did you do?
J: I don't want to tell you.
M: Do we need to go see it?
J: Ya...
M: What is it?
J: I don't know. Talk to Evan.

It turned out they had just pushed some buttons on the DVD and VCR players, but I couldn't stop laughing at Jordan's manipulative approach to the conversation and his answers to my questions.  Next few years should be interesting...

Saturday, August 29, 2009

Our house tonight

This is our house tonight.  Football season has started and that means it is on at our home.  I have a love/hate relationship with football, but I really enjoy it when there is a team on I care about...especially BYU!  But football means more than that to me - it means fall!  Whenever a game is on I feel cozy at home, with good comfort food and friends.  Tonight I just looked around watching my boys play and felt happy to be home.  But then I remembered this evening that it was 107 degrees here today - I guess we have a while until it really is fall here.

Friday, August 28, 2009

Simple pleasures

We have had Mike's mom here and we have been having a lot of fun with her, especially the boys! It has been fun to observe the boys more because I haven't had to provide for their every need and entertainment. I love that the simplest things make them so happy.
Last night we went out to eat and the boys were so happy that they got their own cups.

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Today we went to a place that has a bunch of inflatable toys for kids to play on. The boys loved it. Really loved it. Jordan played on an obstacle course for a few minutes and then spent the entire rest of the time on the big slide. Evan had a love hate relationship with the slide but half way through he tried going on his stomach and then he was hooked. They loved the slide. There were two rooms of toys, but they just wanted the slide - it was enough to make them completely happy.
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Wednesday, August 26, 2009

Coming home

I went out visiting teaching last night.  When I came home I peeked at Jordan and found this:
I love his arm around his dog in this one...
Every night before the boys go to bed, we spend a little bit of time with them talking about the day or just goofing off.  We call it mama time and daddy time.  Mike said he must have fallen asleep waiting for me because he kept saying he wanted mama time.  Those are the little moments we look for in our days as moms that make it all worth while!

Tuesday, August 25, 2009

Come little child...

You know how vinyl lettering on walls is becoming so popular?  Well, I admit I want to put some in house as well.  So for a couple months I have been thinking and thinking about what phrase or saying I would like to represent in our home.  And then it hit me one night when I was singing to one of the boys - "Come little child and together we'll learn..." from "Teach Me To Walk In the Light". That was it!  I want our home to be a home of learning - about the gospel, about the world, about each other, about others.  So I have been observing how it plays out in our family.
Today Mike left for his first day of teaching a college course.  As part of his graduate assistantship this year he gets to teach Psychology 101, and he is so excited about it.  His end goal for a career is teaching at a college level, so it is good training.  He is such a fantastic example of not only learning, but excelling at learning.  He does everything well, so I know he will be great at teaching too.  He has learned his field well.  Not only that, though, he is learning how to balance school, family (wife and kids, goodness!), church and recreation.  I have to say that he does a pretty good job and is learning that lesson well too.

I am really enjoying learning through Mike.  He has taught me so much about psychology.  And I have been taking the chance I have right now to learn a few things.  I am trying to learn how to sew, and I love it.  I love being able to create something.  I have also been trying to teach myself some html and other online programming, which I never knew I would enjoy, but I really do.

I have been thinking lately about how much the boys are growing and learning.  It seems that they go through spurts where it seems like that are learning every second and I am amazed at what they say or do.  Jordan has recently learned what the traffic lights mean.  So whenever we go out anywhere, it is constant talk about the green, orange (he still thinks the yellow light is orange) and red lights and what they do.  He soaks up knowledge and thrives on it.  Evan is finally talking more, and we are surprised at what he knows.  We realized that because he doesn't talk as much as Jordan, we assumed he didn't understand as much as he does.  But he is now letting us know what he knows.  Lately he has been loving animals and their sounds.  And the biggest lessons they are learning right now are how to share and take care of each other.  Constant learning.  And their learning is a great chance for me to learn more about life and family as well (it is a way to look on the bright side of those hard days, anyway!)  For example, I am still trying to figure out a trick to get Evan to eat a sandwich for lunch.  Or how to reign in a three-year-old who isn't interested in what you tell him to do.  And most importantly, I am still learning how to be patient with two very strong, smart, busy little boys.  I hope that my boys continue to love learning as much as they do, that they recognize all there is to learn in this life, and that they especially love learning and living the gospel.  Here we go, a lifetime of learning up ahead!

Monday, August 24, 2009

A bubbly time of day

Today started out on the frustrating side for me, which is what happens when it is shopping day at Walmart - only two lines open and when another opened everyone in back ran up. Then I got yelled at in the parking lot for no reason. As soon as we got home, the boys fought over everything. Then I read an article that made me so frustrated with hypocrisy in our country. After an hour of convincing Jordan to take a nap, I sat down and peeked at friends' blogs. And that did it. Perspective was regained. It was nice to be reminded that what is important is what is happening at home. My family, the good, the bad, the mundane, and everything else. So, thank you to all of you that have blogs to let me share those moments in your lives too.

After dinner, the boys spent some time outside exploring the bushes and playing with bubbles.

This is how Jordan blows bubbles...


Oh, they had fun.



I love my family.

As a side note, Mike starts his first day of teaching Psychology 101 at UNLV tomorrow. Wish him luck! But I know he'll do great.

Sunday, August 23, 2009

A lovely evening

Tonight was a very nice evening. It has been overcast here, which cooled the temperature considerably. So we took advantage and went to walk around the temple. It was a gorgeous night.






Savior of the World


In April, I had the amazing chance to be in the orchestra for a local producation of the Savior of the World program done in Salt Lake City. I loved it. Everything. I was finally able to get a cast/orchestra/choir/tech picture to remember the experience by.

Past random pictures

It has been a long time. So, here are some random pictures of the past couple weeks.

We subscribed to the paper! We read it a lot and so one night Jordan wanted to read it to. He kept looking at it and asking what it said:


The boys love making a pile of pillows and climbing on it:

Evan isn't the most social kid. We had some friends over last weekend and when they got there he just buried his head in a pillow and cried for awhile. He is cute and so strong in his personality:

So, I had to go upstairs one morning to get some information for Mike. When I came back down, this is what I found:

Needless to say, they don't get crayons unsupervised anymore....

Sunday, August 9, 2009

H-2-Oh yeah!

I (Mike) had the boys outside with me on Saturday and they wanted to swim so I let them swim in their diapers. Huggies are ridiculously absorbent! The diapers weighed about 10 lbs each by the time I took them off. The boys had tons of fun though.











Monday, August 3, 2009

Oh my!

My boys were so handsome on Sunday! Unfortunately, I couldn't get a good picture, but here are my tries!