Brooklyn Berry

This week Kyle had to work a lot of overtime at work, so Jen was happy to have the Relief Society "Fabulous Friday" activity so she could have some time away from the kids. One of the projects she worked on was this pillow-case dress for Brooklyn (this picture doesn't quite do it justice). She had a lot of fun, especially since she hasn't done a lot of sewing for the last couple of years. It's so fun to have a little girl to dress up! When Ethan saw Brooklyn wearing this dress he laughed and said she was a tomato. Jen corrected him and said she was a cherry. Ethan later told Kyle that she was a berry, and Kyle said she was a Brooklyn Berry. This cracked him up!

Ethan continues to be obsessed with Toy Story. He even knows how to spell toy. "T-O-Y says toy!" When asked how to spell "story," he'll say "Y-O-R..." He knows the letters, but has yet to grasp the concept of order.

Yesterday a neighbor gave us some old clothes for the kids. Jen saw this vest and told Ethan it was like Woody's vest. He was soooo excited! He even had to wear the vest to bed last night, and put up quite the stink when we told him he couldn't wear the hat and vest to church.

It's amazing how fast his vocabulary has increased over the last few months. He's picking up phrases from us (and who knows where else...). Some of our favorites lately include:

• "Wait a minute..."
• "You're kidding me!"
• "I've got an idea..." (then he explains what his idea is. For example, "I've got an idea! Let's go to the park")
• He's still running around the house yelling "To infinity and beyond!"

He's been adding things to his Christmas/Birthday list every day. Today he informed us that he wants "a big Ferrari." He also wants Sir Topham Hatt, James, Gordon (each from Thomas), a big Buzz Lightyear with wings that light up, Rex, a real R/C (each from Toy Story), a pair of Cowboy Boots like Woody, and the list goes on.

He's also decided what we're all going to be for Halloween. After debating between a Tootsie Roll, a guitar, and Buzz Lightyear, he finally decided on Buzz (big surprize) so we bought him a really cute Buzz costume. According to him Dad will be Woody, Mom will be Andy's Mom (for those of you who don't watch Toy Story at least two times a day, Andy is the kid that owns Buzz and Woody), and Brooklyn is going to be Jessie (the Yodeling Cowgirl that is part of Woody's Posse). We don't have the heart to tell him that Brooklyn is going to be some sort of fairy princess with a fluffy tu-tu instead.

Buzz Boy and Apple Girl

Brooklyn is 11 months old today!! She had lots of fun on Friday helping Mom and Dad pick apples from our trees. She loved searching for different ones to taste (even rotten ones on the ground--we tried to keep them away). A few new things about Brooklyn are that she loves clapping to the song "If you're happy and you know it" and loves to shake her head. She is so darling to watch do these things. She is such a fun little girl! She still has no teeth.

We spent Friday and Saturday cleaning up our yard and garden for winter, and making applesauce. We literally spent all day on Saturday canning applesauce. I think I even dreamed about applesauce last night. We still have so many apples!! If anyone would like some, let us know.

Here is our little apple baby.

One of Ethan's favorite things to do is go to Maceys to ride in the "race car carts" and get a cookie. All though it isn't always peaceful, I love seeing my two sweeties side by side in the cart. They are so cute!!

Kyle snapped this picture while Ethan was napping after church yesterday. He was so exausted (and looks kind of wasted).

Ethan has recently become obsessed with Toy Story. Here are some videos to prove his fascination with Buzz and Woody. Brooklyn makes a few cameos as well.

Conference Weekend

We had a really fun conference weekend two weeks ago. We sent the kids to grandma's house for the weekend and Kyle and I went to Park City. This was our first time away from Brooklyn and it was fabulous!! We missed the kids (a little), but realized how important it is to have a break from them now and then. We are already sort of planning our next trip away from them (to celebrate Kyle's graduation)! The kids did really well. Ethan was so excited to go to grandmas that he didn't even care that we weren't going to be there. We met Kyle's mom in Bountiful for lunch before we left the kids with her. Ethan ate a little, but just wanted to get to grandma's house to play with her toys. He didn't even want to eat his ice cream before leaving. We called the next day to talk to the kids, but he didn't even want to talk to us. He was having so much fun playing with toys. Brooklyn, however, was excited to hear our voices. She had a harder time than Ethan without us at first, but did great.

We didn't take very many pictures, but here are a few (some are cell phone pics, hence the poor quality).
We spent some time at the Olympic Park. Who do you think has better form?

We spent Thursday and Friday in Park City, then joined our kids and family in Logan for the rest of the weekend. It was fun to spend Conference with so much family and we of course loved the messages shared.

Here is a little video of Ethan puddle jumping at Grandma Taylor's house between conference sessions on Sunday.

Meltdown Madness

Ethan's stomach flu only lasted a day or so, then he was pretty much back to normal. Unfortunately, Jen caught the same thing a few days later and was up vomiting all Monday night/ Tuesday morning. It just doesn't seem fair moms get sick with all they have on their plates! It took a few days until she felt like she had much of an appetite again . . . not even ice cream sounded good for a few days.


Ethan has been very emotional for the last week. It has been so difficult to deal with. For example, today decided to save time to put Ethan's socks and shoes on in the car when we got to church since we were running late. Ethan was very upset that we disrupted the order of things and demanded that we return home to put his shoes on. He was wailing in the foyer of the church for about 15 minutes before we finally figured out how to calm him down. We hope this phase ends quickly.


Anyway, we managed to snap a few pictures of the kids this week.


Brooklyn loves Ethan's toothbrush. We think she is just envious that he has teeth.



The other day, Brooklyn saw some of Ethan's "big boy" underwear in the laundry basket. Ethan saw her reaching for a pair and threw himself into the laundry basket to prevent her from touching his property. I couldn't help but laugh and had to grab the camera.

We worked in the garden this weekend digging up some ugly shrubs and rose bushes we inherited with the house and replacing them with plants we like. While clearing out the area, we picked our pumpkins. This spring, we had numerous volunteer plants pop up in our compost heap. We saved a few to see what they might become. To our surprise one plant that we thought would be a squash turned out to be a pumpkin plant! Ethan is excited about them.

Ethan and Brooklyn helped dig in the dirt. Ethan thought it was funny to put dirt in his ears, head, tummy, etc. Brooklyn just wanted to eat it. She wasn't very happy when we would wash her off, move her from the dirt, or when it was time to come inside.

Puke

The other day we were having dinner a family in our ward, and we were telling them how Ethan rarely gets sick. We must have really jinxed ourselves, because that night Ethan woke up at about 10:30 pm. We went in to see what was wrong and found puke covering everything in his bed. Poor kid. We cleaned everything up and Kyle slept with Ethan to keep him comforted. Ethan threw up three more times that night and once the next morning, but has been himself ever since. Thank goodness.

Other than that this has been a pretty dull week. Shiver me timbers! We didn't even get a chance to really celebrate National Talk Like a Pirate Day on Saturday.

We need to get better at taking pictures of things.

We're pretty stoked about the Heroes premier tomorrow.

September Harvest

How can September be almost half over already?!

Brooklyn is now 10 months old. She has been especially cute and sweet lately. Here are a few things she has started doing lately:

• She is now crawling really well on her knees. It probably took her a little longer to get it down than Ethan because of all the dresses she wears. We didn't realize how much harder it is to crawl when wearing a dress.
• She loves to clap her hands and pull herself up to her feet holding on to anything she can find. This has caused quite a few spills and tumbles lately since not everything is as sturdy as she thinks it is. She has pulled the garbage can down on herself a time or two.
• She also loves to cuddle. She loves to lay her head on our shoulders and say, "Ahhhh."
• For a while now she has loved dancing with Mom and Dad. It is probably her favorite thing to do. It is failproof for cheering her up and making her laugh and chuckle. Even when she is sobbing one minute, within a few seconds of dancing her mood will change completely.
  

Ethan's potty training has been going really well. He has been diaper-free for over two weeks and has only had a few accidents, and only one at night. We were away from home all day yesterday and he had no trouble.

When Ethan's food is too hot, he asks us to blow on it for him. The other day when his carseat was too hot as we were getting into the car he asked us to blow on that for him too.

He has lately been obsessed with "Toy Story." When he picked out underwear a few weeks ago, we got him a pack that included an assortment featuring several Pixar movies. He hadn't seen the movie then, but has since and loves to fly his Buzz Lightyear and Woody toys (thanks Grandma Morrey) around the house saying, "To infini'ee ba'ond!"

Yesterday, Kyle's work had an open house at their office/campus. They only open their doors to non-employees once every few years because of the nature of the work they do. It was fun to see some of what he does and to actually see his desk. Ethan was excited to get to go to his work and Kyle's parents even joined us. Jen has two uncles that work there too, so it was fun surprise to bump into family while there (Uncles Dave, Jim, Randy, Russell, their families and even her Grandpa Nelson). Due to security restrictions, however, we unfortunately couldn't take our camera so we don't have any pictures.

We have been so busy harvesting from our garden lately. Over the last few weeks we've been canning like crazy and still have so much more we want to do. We've canned stewed tomatoes, a few batches of plain tomatoes, salsa, spaghetti sauce, green beans, and applesauce. We've also blanched and frozen our corn. We still plan on doing at least two more batches of salsa, apple pie filling, apple slices, and more applesauce. Maybe it will be a blessing when our garden freezes. We are grateful for all we've been able to add to our food storage.

Hurray for the premier of "The Office" this week!!

Potty Party

The other day we realized we only had two diapers left for Ethan before we would run out. For the last several months we've talked to him about how nice it would be when he could use the potty and have no more diapers. We also told him if he hit certain milestones he would get certain rewards. We would remind him often about the potty and he would respond telling us about the toys and rewards he would get. We did our best to not give him any pressure about it. Recently he started to show lots of interest, but we didn't know exactly how to handle it. After getting lots of advice, we felt really good about going all out, so we did it. We threw Ethan a potty party on Friday to celebrate the end of diapers. He was so excited about it. We went to the store to pick out underwear and came home had brownies and ice cream and played some games. For one of the games, we played with some balloons. As you can see below, the kids loved it. They were probably the favorite part of the party.
Since then, we've been amazed at how well he has done. We tried a pull-up the first night, but he has since pleaded to only wear underwear. He has only had two accidents during the day, none while sleeping. He did great at church today and has no problem using any size of potty. We hope this post doesn't jinx us, but we have been pleasantly surprised at how smoothly and low stress it has been so far. It hasn't been very long yet, but we already feel that it has been successful and it already feels so great to only have to buy diapers for one kid!

When we were at Thanksgiving Point a few weeks ago, we took this panoramic picture of the waterfall down there and forgot to post it with our Thanksgiving Point post below, so here it is (click on it to see a larger version of the picture):