Cool Cake

This is a picture that my friend Crystal emailed me this morning. She is an avid cake decorator, and always produces the most amazing works of sugary-sweet art. I told her that I wished she were here in Utah to decorate Jeremiah's cake for him... oh well.
This cake was for her friend's son's 2nd birthday.
Keep it up Crystal, you are great!

Picture from James

James emailed us a picture today. In his email this is what he said about it...


"Today was a busy day. We had a gun shoot and I was running around like a chicken with its head cut off. At least that is what one person told me I looked like. But other then that things went well. I had a fun time and I even got the chance to shoot."



James is in a supervising and instructing position for most of what he does now, so he doesn't get to do the fun stuff very often any more, since he usually has to make sure that other people are doing the fun stuff safely and correctly.



We are glad that you had fun Daddy, stay happy, and stay safe... Love your Offical Fan Club.

Lots of fun lately

We have been having some fun lately.

When ever it hasn't been snowing...yes SNOWING... or raining

we have been going to the playground. Isaac doesn't have any problems giving

Mommy heart attacks. I try really hard to be trusting and just let him have fun.

Jeremiah was pretending that he was a jaguar jumping out of a tree.
Yes, he dressed himself, the orange shirt and red FLOOD pants were all him.

Then of course, after about an hour playing on the playground, it always turns to bug watching time.

Eden loves playing at the playground too...
And then, inevitably, Isaac finds the mud holes. Going home means bath time. I usually just let him play and get as dirty as he can, until he starts trying to put his mouth in the mud, I have to put my foot down at that.
Thursday we went down to Ogden to the Dinosaur Park there. We went with Grandma, Uncle Jon, Aunt Holly, and Baby Ady. The boys were having a blast seeing all the skeletons. At first I had Isaac in his stroller, he was sitting quietly as we went through the museum. Then I decided to let him down and see how he would behave. Wow, it was a crazy transformation. He and I went back through and it was as though he hadn't just seen everything already, everything was new and VERY exciting from the perspective of his own feet. So he got to stay out of the stroller through the outside, 5 acres part of the park too, since obviously he "saw" things better that way.

This picture is Jeremiah, Isaac (still in the stroller), Grandma, Eden, and our friendly neighborhood T-Rex. Oh, and Uncle Jon in the background.

Here is Isaac during his "down period". He is exploring a dinosaur foot print, with Grandma's help.

Out side, the dinosaurs are life like reconstructions of what they might have looked like. I guess this is a trophy wall...

Uncle Jon was offering Isaac up to the carnivore, I expected Isaac to be scared but he wasn't.

I guess this picture explains itself... Oh, and yes, they are wearing dinosaur shirts to the dinosaur park! How could they wear anything else? It just wouldn't be right.

We had a blast and I took 153 pictures and videos. Some day when I actually get around to scrapbooking again, we will have plenty of dinosaur memories to go through.

Two new things

Eden has reached the milestone of having her first bowl of rice cereal, which so far she likes, when I put a little sugar in it, she gives me dirty looks and spits it out if I don't.

Plus, the first time I found her sucking her thumb. Jeremiah and Isaac both took pacifiers. Our princess only likes her pacifier when she is sleeping, usually she would rather suck her fingers. I guess she got tired of gagging herself with her fingers going down her throat, and discovered that her thumb didn't have that problem. When I took her thumb out of her mouth she told me off, I think she might have been swearing but I'm not sure.

Isaac's Birthday

Now this is really late getting posted, thanks to the move and that I had trouble getting some images to post.

We had lots of fun on April 3, which was Isaac's 2nd birthday. We rented a bounce house and had some of Isaac's friends come over and help us celebrate by jumping and eating cupcakes. It gets pretty crazy when you have so many toddlers in one place! The boys had fun playing in the bounce house with Daddy too.

scared of the dark

I have discovered in the last couple of days that my little monkey, Isaac, is afraid of the dark. 3 nights ago he indicated to me that he didn't want to go to bed because he was afraid something would crawl up the wall at the top of his bed. So I told him that his Teddy would keep him safe, Jeremiah was in the room with him, and that his toy puppy loved to eat bugs and would eat anything that tried to climb anywhere near him. That seemed to settle him for that night.

Then 2 nights ago he ended up in my bed with me at some point. I had not closed my closet door when I went to bed, which is something that I usually have to do... I have a thing about closet, bathroom, and sometimes bedroom doors being open anywhere in the house when I am sleeping. Anyway, Isaac indicated to me that the closet was open and told me that it needed to be closed, then he proceeded to get down and close it himself, before he finally went back to sleep.

Finally, last night, he was being playful and not staying in his bed. After several attempts to tuck him in I finally did the tuck and run thing, hoping that if I got the light turned off and the door shut before he got out of bed he wouldn't move again. It usually works, but not that time. He got right down, I could hear him laughing. Then his laughs became sounds of concern, "Oh oh, Oh oh mommy!" So I went in and searched for him in the dark. When I couldn't find him, I turned the light on to see Jeremiah pointing under his bed. I looked and sure enough there was Isaac. He said, "I'm locked in!" Apparently, in playing around, he got down and hid under Jeremiah's bed in an attempt to trick me, but once there discovered that he didn't dare get out again.

I don't know if it is the dark he is scared of, or what might be in the dark that he can't see, or maybe even what he can see in the dark. And I started to wonder today if maybe he doesn't think that Monsters Inc. is a documentary, after all, what is reality to a 2 year old?

Where did this kid come from?

I sometimes think that my kids are so strange... adorable but strange. They didn't get any of it from me of course. What Eden is doing she did to herself. I set her propped up against the boppy pillow and she maneuvered herself to this upside down possum position. I tried to help her sit up straight again 4 or 5 times but she kept pushing herself upside down, so I decided to leave her like this and grab my camera. She was perfectly happy for along time, playing with her brothers and sucking on her fingers... When she was done she didn't even cry, she just started doing crunches trying to sit back up, and told me that she wanted to go to bed now... I don't know where she comes from...

We love you Daddy

James left on his deployment today.
It is always hard for him to leave his kids and me, he loves us so much and doesn't like missing out on watching them grow and learn. And of course the kids miss Daddy when ever he is gone for 1 day, let alone months at a time. But for us, we know that this is the right place for us to be. We turned to Heavenly Father in prayer and we both received the peace and confirmation through the Holy Ghost that it is indeed where and what we need to be doing right now. That knowledge is empowering as well as comforting.
So James is gone serving his country and we will keep the home fires burning for him. We will also be keeping in touch via email which is a true blessing for service members and their families... sometimes I think situations like this are the true reason Heavenly Father revealed this miracle of communication technology... so that loved ones can remain in contact when they otherwise would be separated by silence for months at a time...
We love you Daddy. And we are proud to be able to support you as you serve in the United States Navy.