Rub a Dub Dub, Two Kids in the Tub

This week we saw lots of family. Ethan went to visit Grandma Morrey for a few days and I was reminded how much easier life was with one kid (though I think Ethan is probably the easier of the two because he is a bit more independent). We took advantage of his absence by painting our banister. Unfortunately we underestimated how long it would take and still haven't finished it. It seems like I only have time to work on it when I am able to get both kids to nap at the same time (and frankly painting isn't always how I want to spend those glorious few hours). I'm losing my determination to paint my kitchen cabinets like I wanted to do this summer. We'll see though. That project comes with a promise of getting new countertops and a sink when it is finished!!!

For the last week or so, we started bathing the kids together. Ethan absolutely loves helping wash Brooklyn. It has been so cute, though we've had to be sure he doesn't get soap in her eyes.

Jen's cousin Melissa got married up in Logan this weekend. Of course we forgot to take our camera. (Kyle has some cell phone pics that I don't have right now). We had a good time visiting with family and taking advantage of the free babysitting. Kyle and I went and saw the new Disney/Pixar movie Up in 3D. We really enjoyed it, though I thought the beginning was really sad (I didn't cry).

Here is a picture of Ethan playing piano with Grandma Morrey. He loves to play the pianos at both Grandma's houses. It is funny what Ethan associates his Grandma's with. Whenever we talk about Grandma Morrey he talks about cars and ice cream. She collects the toy cars from the movie Cars and usually has a new one whenever he visits. He loves those things so much. He talks about them all the time. Grandma Taylor is known for having chocolate milk whenever he visits. This is a big deal to him too. I have fond memories of going to my Grandma Taylor's as a kid and being given some chocolate milk and Creamies. It will be fun to see what our kids will look forward to in future visits as they grow up.

Congratulations John and Loni !

This weekend, Kyle's older brother John married his sweetheart, Loni. After over a year of dating, we say "it's about time." It'll be nice to not be the only married couple in Kyle's family. It was a beautiful day and the ceremony in the Salt Lake temple was lovely. We spent the last two days with them and somehow Kyle only managed to get a few pictures and this video of the happy couple. I guess that's what happens when half the time is spent chasing a two year old boy and the other half is is spent consoling a 7 month old baby.

Here's the other picture we got of them at the reception. We decorated John's car at the reception and Ethan contributed to the festivities. As the car was being decorated, we noticed that Ethan had a poopy diaper, which he happily let us put right in the middle of the windshield of John's car. (We were nice enough to leave the "goods" inside of the diaper.) Justin circled the diaper with whipped cream and wrote "your future." We thought it was quite funny.

When we were at the temple waiting for John and Loni to come out of the temple, we saw that Elder Dallin H. Oaks was walking around the temple grounds. Turns out he was there for another family's wedding. When asked if he comes out often he said he hadn't been in that area outside of the temple for three years. He was kind enough to pose for a photo with Jen and Brooklyn. This was especially meaningful for Jen since her lesson in relief society today was based on one of Elder Oaks' talks.

Brooklyn is becoming much more mobile lately. She's working really hard on getting up on her hands and knees. She can't quite do it yet, but as you can see here, she is very close.

The other day Ethan came out to Jen saying "yellow hat." He put this on all by himself.

Beautiful Brooklyn

I just wanted to share some cute pictures that Heather (our sister-in-law) took of Brooklyn recently. We are so blessed to have such a beautiful girl and an amazing photographer in the family. Thanks again, Heather!! (You can see another picture of Brooklyn with her cousin Allie on Heather's website here.)


Our family has had a busy week and weekend trying to finish up yard projects. Kyle is back in school starting this week and we've spent every moment possible trying to get our garden in, build a dry well, and do some landscaping in our yard. Kyle single-handedly hauled 8 tons of topsoil plus the several tons of fill dirt and compost he moved around the yard. We are almost done and will share pictures when we finish.

This weekend we were fortunate to be able to see Lonni (fiance of Kyle's older brother John) go through the Bountiful temple. It was so nice to be there and to go to the temple. It was the first time we were able to go since before Brooklyn was born. John and Lonni will be married in the Salt Lake Temple on Saturday.

We also had Heather, Brian, Jackson, and Allie stay with us for two nights while they were waiting to be able to move into their new home in Spanish Fork. We had a great time. Ethan was heartbroken this morning when they left that he couldn't play with Brian and Jackson today and keeps telling me he wants to go to their house tomorrow. Fortunately, we will see them again in less than two weeks for my cousin Melissa's wedding.

Memorial Day Weekend

We had an enjoyable holiday weekend, though we mostly did a lot of yard work. We took advantage of the extra long weekend to finally work on fixing our leaky basement. Kyle is building a dry well to divert rain water from our basement. In the past when we get too much rain, the pipe coming off of our down spouts gets backed up and fills our stairwell with water and seeps in through the door (It has happened 3 or 4 times in the two years we've been here). We considered several options to fix the problem and feel confident that this will work best. Kyle may have gone a little overboard with the size of the gravel pit for the water to go, but he didn't want to take any chances of it being too small. He dug a whole in our yard with his shovel measuring approx. 4 ft x 4 ft x 6 ft deep. Then filled it with coarse gravel. Unfortunately the weight of the truck with the gravel made some awful ridges in our front lawn (the same spot that we put sod in last year).
Here is the trench he dug from the down spout out to the pit. Unfortunately, we weren't able to finish everything like we hoped due to the rain on Sunday making it too muddy to work yesterday. Though it was probably nice for Kyle to get a rest. His hands got pretty blistered from it.We did get to have a little fun this weekend. Our ward had a fun picnic on Saturday, and Scott and Heather blessed their baby Allie on Sunday. We had a great time seeing so much family and letting the kids play with their cousins and relatives. We took our camera, but unfortunately left the memory card at home, so we any pictures to share of that. Hopefully, though, you will enjoy the following pictures as much as we did.

Having great success with peas, we gave Brooklyn green beans for the first time this weekend. The following pictures speak for themselves. (Ethan would agree with Brooklyn on this one)

Peas Please

Tonight Brooklyn graduated from baby cereal to her first Big Girl food...peas! As you can see from this picture, her first reaction was one of confusion......but she quickly decided she loved them and kept asking for more.
She ate until she couldn't eat any more.
After she was finished, she had to lick the spoon clean.

Ethan's been pretty funny lately too. He has been learning all kinds of new words and makes up a few as well. Here are some of the funny words he's been saying and things he's been doing lately:

• When he wants to cuddle/snuggle with Mom or Dad, he says "tuggle with Mamma/Dadda."
• Even though he loves Lightning McQueen, he still can't say his name. Instead he says "Fween." When we try to get him to say it right, he sometimes say "MaFween."
  
• Today he started calling DVDs "DDEs."
• Instead of "ABCs", he says "BECs"
  
• He loves to count. The problem is, he knows the numbers but not the order. We often hear him muttering to himself "one, two, three, two, seven, two, six, nine..." and on and on.
• He likes to share his food with his cars
• Every night before bed he has to kiss his Cars book characters and say "bye" to each one.
• He loves Thomas and Friends so much that the other day he wanted to change Brooklyn's name to Baby James (after one of the trains).
• Today in nursery Ethan learned about sharing. The teachers gave each kid a toy car, and they were supposed to let the other kids play too. Ethan refused to give his up. The concept must have sunk in because later during Sacrament meeting he had fun sharing his animal crackers with the little girl sitting next to us. She said "Thank you" and Ethan proudly responded, "Thank me, Thank me!"
  

6 Months Old Today!!

Our baby is 6 months old today!! Where did the time go? We love our little Brooklyn so much and feel so blessed to have this sweet little girl in our family. She has such a bright smile that always brightens our day (figures we can't always capture it when taking her picture). Here are some pictures of her I took this morning. Ethan was very distracting so I had trouble getting her to look at the camera.



It has been amazing to see her look more and more like me as she has grown. Here is a picture of when I was about the same age.She was so good yesterday letting us get some yard work done, though she did get tired after a while. Here are a few pictures.


Happy half-birthday, baby girl!

Breaking New Ground

This weekend was exhausting! We rented this massive 16 horsepower hydraulic tiller to break ground for flower beds and more garden space. A very kind neighbor of ours is giving us some raspberry starts. It has been a dream of Kyle's for the longest time to have raspberries. Although they probably won't produce until next year, we are really looking forward to picking our own raspberries. It will take some time to get our flower beds fixed up, but we will post some pictures when we are finished. It took several hours for Kyle to do all of the tilling. Ethan and Brooklyn enjoyed watching daddy out working.
Ethan wanted to go out and help so badly, but settled for helping me make cookies instead (you can kind of see the evidence on his face).
Kyle had Brooklyn on his shoulders the other day while on the computer. I couldn't resist taking a picture.
And this one of Ethan was just too cute, not to share.
Sunday afternoon, we finally got to go see Ethan and Brooklyn's new cousin Allie. Brooklyn and Allie are about 5 months apart. While we were amazed by Allie's dark hair . . .
. . . Brooklyn thought Allie's fingers were particularly delicious.
Thanks so much for letting us come and visit. When we got out to the car after our visit Ethan said, "Brian and Jackson house fun!" After this busy weekend, we were all so exhausted when we got home last night.

Update: We are so grateful for the wisdom of our sister-in-law, Heather. We implemented some of her advice following the frustration we posted about last week and it has been working so well! Ethan now loves to pick one or two of our fingers to hold while walking through parking lots and bedtime has been a bit easier since we put our foot down and created more boundaries (and now only bathe him every other day--he is such a dirty kid, hopefully we'll be able to keep this one up). We originally created our bedtime routine because he would cry himself to sleep almost every night when he was little and it seemed to help. Now that he is two, and now an excellent sleeper, he figured out how to use the routine against us to drag things out. It feels good to be the one in charge again :).