Fall/Thanksgiving

I didn't take my camera for Thanksgiving dinner, but it was nice. It was our family, my parents and little brother, P and her son C, who are practically family, and then some family friends, who are empty nesters and had no one else to spend thanksgiving with. In all, it was 11 people there. Crowded, but there was lots of good food and company. Later that evening, Nana and Bop-bop Staheli and Uncle Jar came down. And no, I never got a picture with all of us. But, I did get some pictures of the kids playing with the leaves. Thanks Bop-bop Staheli for raking them up... over and over and over and over.




So there isn't much of a fall here. Seriously... the first time I went to Utah in October and drove through a canyon, I told my dad, "I didn't think trees really turned yellow, red, orange, or purple." Here they go from mostly green to dead really quick. This year however, I took the time to notice our tree out front as it started turning. It was so beautiful! It turned this really brilliant orange color that really stood out against the intesne blue sky. Here is a picture, but it doesn't do it justice. I wish I knew how to work photoshop so I could show you guys how it looked to me.

Haircut

So a couple weeks before Thanksgiving, I cut my hair. Most of you have either seen me, or seen the picture on facebook, but not everyone. So here is my haircut. It was about 6 inches cut off in places... maybe more.

Vegas Baby!!

So the weekend before Thanksgiving, we spent in Vegas. My Uncle and Aunt (Uncle whom I haven't seen since I was itty bitty, and my Aunt, whose been married to my uncle for 16 year but I have never met) came for some conference. He's a doctor, so it was some medical something. Anyway, we decided to go so I could actually meet them. It was way fun. For those of you who don't know, I also have a brother and his family there. Friday night when we got there, we all had dinner together. It was 12 of us at the olive garden. Once I thought we should have someone take a picture of us, but we never did do that. That was the only time we were all together like that, so I was kinda bummed that we didn't make it. Saturday we went to the Shark Reef Aquarium. Jordan and Liam had tons of fun!! Here are some pictures....


Liam loved looking at the fish!! When one would come up in front of him, he'd get a huge grin, giggle, and try to grab it. It was priceless.

I love how it looks like the shark is coming down to eat my little brothers head. LOL :)
This is a pool where you could touch the stingrays. Jordan was too scared to touch them, though she did touch the water once.
Liam just wanted to jump in the pool and splash around.
I got up the guts to touch them. Towards the center of their backs, they are hard... almost shell like. The farther out towards the tips of their wings (???) they get soft and squishy.

This octopus was soooo cool to watch move!

Wordless Wednesday

Horray for Z!!

Horray for Z!! It means I'm finally done blogging the alphabet! Now I can get back to normal posts. What's sad is that this took me nearly a year to complete. It was hard at times to figure out how what was going on in life could be started with a certain letter. It was definately a learning experience. I still recommend to others, don't do it. If you want to take up something cool to do with your blog, do one of the photos a day thing. Where you take pictures everyday for a year. Maybe I'll try that next year and see how it goes. I suppose I should start getting used to taking pictures now if I'm going to do that. Anyway, for the letter "z," the only thing that kept coming to my mind was "... a Zizzer Zazzer Zuz, as you can plainly see." So, I found a picture of the Zizzer Zazzer Zuz for you. If you have no clue what I'm talking about, he is the character for the letter z in Dr. Seuss's ABC book. Hope you enjoy the picture.

Y is for Year

I still cannot belive that my little Liam turned 1 year old on Nov. 16. It seems like he was just a little baby. Heck, it seems like I was just pregnant, but here we are, a year after he was born. I try to remember what my life was like without Liam. For instance, what did I do after I dropped Jordan off at preschool? Could I have laughed so much ever before he was born? I remember being terrified of having a little boy. It was going to be and is so different from having a little girl.

Here are some Liam things.
~He loves getting his shoes on, because it means he's going outside. That is about the only time he'll sit still.
~He loves his Joey! He lights up and starts giggling as soon as we pick Joey up from school. Lately he has enjoyed waking her up with giggles, pats, and hugs.
~He loves Nana Ross' dogs. He squeals with delight whenever he sees them.
~He doesn't have a favorite toy. Just a favorite type of toy, and that is anything with wheels. As long as he can push it around, he's a happy camper.
~For him, outdoors is the place to be.
~He likes riding frontways in the car much more than he liked backwards.
~When he is inconsolable, just toss him in the bath tub, and he is the happiest kid ever.
~He is generally a very happy baby.
~He is a daddy's boy as much if not more so than he is a momma's boy.
~He can wave bye, sign "more," say "Mamamamama" and "Dadadadada."
~He loves to go in a room and shut the door until you ask where Liam is. Then he'll poke his head out and start giggling. This is followed my him shutting the door until you call for him again.
~Everytime he goes out back, he has to taste the dirt that day. I'm starting to wonder if our dirt magically changes taste for him.

All in all, our lives are definately much more enriched with him in them. Here are some pictures from his birthday.


Isn't that the cutest pacifier grin you've ever seen?

He loved the cake, but didn't know what to do with the candle. Good thing Joey was there to blow it out for him.

Opening his first present. He just walked around with the car in the box for a while, not caring about the other presents. He got three of these "Shake'n'go" cars.

This was by far the favorite toy of the night. All the kids who were over were fighting over it, so we had to take it away.

All in all, he had a great birthday with tons of toys.

X, Well technically eX, but at least it sounds like X

Extra cute. I promised some people a while ago I would put up pictures of my two cute kiddos in their super cute costumes. Well when I had a little time this week, my camera cord had dissappeared. I finally found it (thanks Liam for hiding it in all the bajillion other cords we have), so here are the eXtra cute kids!

J.S. on the hay bales by the hay maze at her school.

J.S.'s class at school. Joey's in the front and her teacher, Mrs. Miller, is mini mouse hiding in the back.

Joey and Liam on the hay bales at the ward Trunk or Treat.

Liam's first sucker. He was in love! I just thought it was cute how he'd stick the stick coming sideways out of his mouth.

And lastly, just a super cute shot of Liam with his big grin.

Wordless Wednesday

Very Cute

I have the Very cutest kids. I don't care what you say. I'm not biased. Just stating facts. LOL. Anyway, I know I haven't posted many pictures lately, so I figured I'd do a bunch of pictures for you today. Hope you enjoy them!
While waiting for Jordan in gymnastics, Liam learned how to climb up the slide.

Once he got to the top, he didn't know what to do next.
When Liam was still figuring out this whole walking thing, he loved to walk along behind JS (what she has decided her new nickname can be) while she was on her bike.

When she quit peddling, he'd try pushing her. This is his concentrated pushing face.

Aren't they just cute????

Liam also really loved sitting on the bike while J.S. pushes it.

Liam and his cousin Justing enjoying the trampoline.

Liam conned Uncle Pat into bouncing him.

J.S., my mom and I went to the fair on Saturday night. There was a "wall of nails" I can't remember if this is Joey's face or my face, but it was pretty fun to play with.

There were huge bubble wands. You could take them over people and encase them in a bubble... sort of.


Joey's first roller coaster!

Bumper Cars!!!

The Tilt-a-whirl was one of her favorite rides.

The last few rides, she quit wanting to ride with me and instead wanted to ride with a boy from school. Man, that makes me feel old. You can barely see the top of his head in this picture. I couldn't get one of the two of them together.

UGH!!

UGH!!! I have several ughs today. First off, was this insane idea that I would blog every letter of the alphabet. Lately, there are things I want to blong about, but I can't figure out how to put them in with that letter. So, just in case anyone else is as insane as I was, DON'T try this. It's much harder than you'd think. Another ugh... Liam's walking. He's everywhere!!! He doesn't want to crawl anymore. If he falls, he crawls until he can get up on something and finish walking. He also climbs up on stuff to get to what he wants. He also pushes stuff over to climb up on. He has figured out how to get what he wants no matter what. The other day we were at my parents, and there was a bucket on top of one of those dinner tray tables. Liam really wanted it, so we pushed it out of his reach. He then grabbed a pen and was trying to either knock the bucket off or trying to somehow get the pen in the bucket and pull the bicket too him. (Can you at least imagine what I'm talking about?) Ugh number two... the bathroom. Ty ripped our master bathroom out in January, and it still has no estimated finishing date. I've almost got it ready for texture, then I can paint, but it still needs to be tiled, a fan put in, we need to get a light fixture, and install it and another one. Then I need to pick out a mirror. Then we can finally have a second bath again. Yay!!!! I can't really say that I have any ughs when it comes to Jordan. Probably just her schedule. It seems like because of her we always have something going on and somewhere to go. Well, enjoy the picture of my cute new walking UGH. LOL.

Another quick ugh... waiting for this video to load. It's late. I wanna be in bed instead.