A Sneak Peek

Here's a peek at one of the many activities our family enjoyed over the last couple of weeks. More pictures and videos to come when I actually have time to sit down and put them together.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EyxGa0Pb0Vk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xz2YLQA2gIU

Challenging myself

I've decided to give myself a challenge. I've noticed that I only blog about really big, important events in mine or my family's life. Which is great, but I seem to forget about the day-to-day activities that are equally as important. Since this blog has become somewhat of a journal for me (which is sad, considering I only post every month or so, if that), I'm going to try and blog at least 1-2 times a week. Hopefully that will motivate me to take more pictures of my kids and write down the funny things they do or say every day. Wish me luck!

Finding hidden treasures

We've had our piano for a while now. Every time we played it there would be keys that would stick or would make strange noises. So the other day Bill decided to take the piano apart to see what was going on.


I've seen the inside of a piano a number of times, but it still amazes me a little bit that someone took the time to put that all together.

After taking apart quite a bit of the piano, we finally found the culprit for part of the problem

I found the one called "Being the Mom" particularly funny.

So now our piano works marginally better. It's still somewhat out of tune, and there are other problems that may or may not get fixed someday, but we are glad we have it.

A sure sign your kids love your FHE treats

Their face and hands are covered in chocolate and they have a huge grin on their face.

A Child's Perspective

I heard a funny story about Will from a friend of mine yesterday and I thought I'd share, because it's a little glimpse of how his mind works. The other day at preschool Will and a couple of his friends were climbing on something they shouldn't have. Their teacher came over and said "Watch out boys or you might climb so high that you'll be as tall as your moms!" Will looked at her and said "I'm already as tall as my mom." To which his teacher replied "Well I'm sure that if your mom stood up she'd be much taller." At this point my friend said that Will just gave his teacher a blank stare. Apparently it didn't occur to him that Mommy could stand up, because he's never seen me do so. Another recent thought from Will that pops up every once in a while: "When Jesus comes you'll be out of your wheelchair." Love this boy!

We Love You Kayla!

Today is Kayla's 2nd birthday. She's grown into such a sweet little girl with a spunky personality. To celebrate her day (and because I feel like bragging about her), here are a few things that make her so wonderful.

-She cheerfully greets us when we go to get her in the morning with a big smile
-She treats her two dolls like real babies. She loves to take them for walks in her stroller, give them hugs, and talk to them
-She's a true girl. She loves to choose out her clothes, comb her hair, and look at herself in the mirror
-She loves to talk to Daddy on the phone when he's at work
-She waves and says hi and bye to everyone she meets
-She has a large vocabulary and is constantly talking
-She's developed a very stubborn streak and wants to do everything herself. Her favorite phrase is "Me too!" which she says very emphatically when she wants to do something
-She loves playing with Will, and defends herself very well when he does something she doesn't like

There are obviously many other things we love about her. We couldn't imagine our home or family without her and are so grateful that she belongs to us. Happy birthday babe!

Midwest Mama meets Pioneer Woman

Have you ever had a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity come into your life? I did this past weekend. Anyone who has ever heard of the blog www.thepioneerwoman.com knows that it's a big deal. Not only does she have a blog, but she's written at least two books, and has appeared on shows like "Today" and "Good Morning America." Recently she has been on a book signing tour for her book Black Heels to Tractor Wheels (which my wonderful mother kindly sent to me when I told her about the book signing, and which I'm already about halfway through. Thanks again Mom!), and one of the cities was St. Louis, MO. That just happens to be our temple district, so we decided to stop by after we were done at the temple and check it out. I had never been to a book signing before, so I didn't know what to expect. It started at 6 in the evening, so when we were done at the temple around 4 we drove over to the library where it was being held to make sure we knew where to go. And it was a good thing we did! When we got there the line had already started outside, so Bill dropped me off to wait in line while he graciously took Will and Kayla somewhere for a while. I had fun chatting with other fans of hers while freezing to death for an hour or so. Bill and the kids came back after a while and we all went inside to take our seats for the Q&A they had before the signing. They introduced her and you would've thought we were at a rock concert or something. It was a lot of fun to listen to her and even catch a few glimpses of her husband, whom she affectionately calls "Marlboro Man".

We were probably only about 7-8 rows back. Awesome seats!

After the Q&A we went to another room for the book signing. As we were standing in line, library workers came to each person and asked "Would you like your book personalized?" If we said yes they asked us our name and then wrote it on a post-it-note and stuck it inside our book so that she'd know who we were without having to ask "Who do I make this out to?" 300 times. When we got up to her table, I handed over the book, she signed it, talked for a minute with Will and Kayla, then graciously posed for a picture with us.

This is definitely not one of my favorite pictures of any of us. I look WAY too excited, Kayla was trying to get off my lap at that point, and Bill wasn't originally going to be in the picture. But I still like it because we got our picture taken with The Pioneer Woman (whose real name is Ree, by the way). So needless to say, even though it ended up being a VERY late night (thank goodness we have 11:00 church now), it was definitely a very fun experience that I'll always remember. And if you've never read her blog or seen her books, go do it now!

Silly kids

It's often hard to entertain two active, often hyper kids, but we have a lot of fun and love watching how silly Will and Kayla can be sometimes.

Kayla is constantly on the move, running from one activity to another. This picture was accidental, but captures her perfectly.


One of Kayla's favorite activities is having one of us read books to her. She also loves to pull our books off the shelves.


Lately Kayla has been interested in the big cupboard in the kitchen. She especially loves the peanut butter and syrup for some reason. Here she is with the peanut butter tower she made, and of course her cheesy smile.


A few weeks ago Bill and I went to see Voyage of the Dawn Treader in 3D. We brought home the glasses they gave us, and immediately Will and Kayla wanted to play with them.



Will and Daddy love doing things together, no matter what it is. Here they are building a Yogi Bear flying machine.



Life is certainly never dull in our house!

Christmas Day

We stayed home for Christmas this year, and Bobby and Susan were gone visiting her family, so we enjoyed a quiet morning with just our family. After enjoying homemade cinnamon rolls and hot chocolate/cider for breakfast we unwrapped presents. We received many wonderful gifts from family members, and Will and Kayla got a number of fun gifts from Santa and others.

Will's remote control truck


Kayla loved (and still loves) her new doll


A while ago Will started asking if he could have his own Book of Mormon to use when we read scriptures as a family, since he reads a verse almost completely by himself each day. So Bill grabbed a couple from the distribution center at the temple and gave one to both Will and Kayla. He even made them extra special by "engraving" (using a puff pen) their names on the front.


Later in the day we invited a few friends over for Christmas dinner. I didn't think to get out the camera while everyone was here, but here's a picture of all the yummy desserts we made.


All in all we had a great Christmas. We missed our families, of course, but enjoyed being together making our own memories and traditions.

Pre-Christmas activities

We had a busy month of December leading up to Christmas. Of course we did the traditional decorating of the tree, but this year it happened in shifts.

The family decorating the tree together


Daddy finishing up with the more fragile ornaments later


The finished product


Since we don't have a fireplace or a mantle, Bill gets pretty creative with where we hang our stockings.


Christmas is a fun time to bake yummy treats. Will saw a picture of reindeer cupcakes in a magazine and wanted to make some. They definitely didn't look like the ones in the picture, but they were still fun to make.


After putting the batter into the muffin tin, I realized we still had some left, so rather than making more cupcakes I decided to put the rest into a round cake pan and make these:


We were fortunate (or unfortunate, depending on who in the family you ask) to have a white Christmas. Will absolutely loves playing in the snow and building snowmen. Kayla tolerates it for a little while, but she seems to share her mom's aversion to really cold temperatures.