We Got It!!

A video of our little guy walking!! He's so cute! We took two, a long one and a short one. Lucky for you, we are posting the short one. Just enough cuteness. He is so funny! He's starting giving big, open mouth, slobbery kisses. Lucky us!!


This video makes McKinley look like Ginormica! Okay, so she doesn't look that tall, but she does look big. I can't believe how old she is. She says the funniest stuff, all adult like. Her ear was infected on Sunday. It was swollen around the earring, about twice as thick as the other side. After a huge battle to get her to let me take the earring out, clean it (which was gross!), and put the earring back in, we were both exhausted! About 1/2 hour later she says, "Mom, my ear feels a lot better now. Thanks for taking care of it. It feels so much better." She told me again the next day. It does look a lot better now.

Valentine Givaway

So, a friend of a friend of mine has a website consisting of gourmet chocolates. It all looks delicious. To help with advertising, she is having a contest. Not that I'll ever win, mostly because I'm not entering a whole lot of times. But, it looks good enough to blog about. So, go check out this link and see what you think.

http://iminthekitchentonight.blogspot.com/2011/01/valentines-day-giveaway.html

I hope it works to just click on it. I never do stuff like this. If not, just copy and paste.
The store is called The Forbidden Fruit. They do a lot of really cute stuff with caramel apples. Anyhoo, wish my one entry luck!! And good luck if you decide to enter too!

It's Official...

Baby Jamison is now walking. He has officially entered toddlerhood. Today is the day to mark on your calendars grandparents. As cute as it is, his powers as DestructoBaby have been increased exponentially. He can now reach higher and make more messes even faster than before. We are glad to see him walk though. Both of the other kids walked sooner. McKinley at 9 months and Gavin at 10 months. Jamison is 13 months. It is sure amazing to watch kids learn to walk. You can't help but watch and laugh at their funny stiff-legged walk. I suppose we could take a short video to post. Keep an eye out for one but don't hold your breath while you wait.

SCARY!!!

I haven't posted in a while as we keep forgetting to take our camera skiing with us. I'm not good at posting without pictures. However, I do have a story to tell.
Matthew has been teaching snowboard lessons at the ski hill on Saturdays. He does the series classes, so the same kids come back every week for 4 weeks. Because he teaches and because Janean practically runs the ski school, McKinley gets to go to lessons for free. Every Saturday two hours before lunch and then two hours after lunch. It's awesome for her!! So, I guess her class is a little adventurous this year. Okay, the teacher said they are wild, not adventurous. Anyhoo, McKinley is old enough now that she doesn't need a parental escort on the lift like she did last year. Scary, Scary, Scary!! And to make matters worse, this last Saturday, her lift buddy leaned too far forward and FELL OFF THE LIFT!! 25 ft down she went! Luckily, and very luckily, she did not sustain any injuries and was laughing when ski patrol went to get her. THEN, that girl's brother fell off the lift!! He wasn't riding with McKinley. Again, no injuries sustained. SCARY! I cannot even begin to express the fear I have of McKinley or Gavin falling off the lift. We talked with McKinley on the way home, making sure she knows that it is not cool to fall off the lift. I think she gets it. Still........
So, I do have a couple of pics and a funny story. McKinley and Gavin fight all of the time. When I can't take it anymore I send them to their room and tell them they can't come out until they can play nice. They share a room, so it forces them together in a closed space and seems to help them chill out. I was doing the dishes and they came down stairs after a time out dressed like this......


Then McKinley started itunes and she grabbed Gavin's hands and they were dancing! It was so cute! I grabbed the camera to take a pic, but they wouldn't dance together after I had the camera. Gavin did not come down in his spiderman slippers. He had on a pair of McKinley's church shoes. Pretty funny! McKinley helped Gavin do up his buttons. Their room was a mess from pulling all their clothes out of the closet, but at least they found a way to play nice.

Finally-we can get on again

Something happened to our blogging password. It prevented us from posting for a bit. So, quick updates. Jamison turned 1 on the 11th. Happy Birthday little guy! He came in at 17 lbs 6 oz and 18 inches tall, which is the smallest of all our kids at a year. He seems so small to us!! It puts him in the 1% for weight and the 6% for height. Matthew is terrified that McKinley will be 6 ft tall and Jamison will be 5'5". I'm sure he'll be taller than that. His birthday was pretty quiet. We celebrated at Aunt Sophie and Uncle Morgan's house. (thanks for letting us crash your house, Soph!) He wasn't too interested in getting into his cake. After about 20 minutes of screaming and eating cake given to him by Matthew, he finally went after it with a fork. He did not like the frosting. Visual aids........
I'm pretty proud of this cake. I've been rather lazy making cakes lately. This is my first attempt since McKinley turned 2. Lucky for them, grandma Susie loves making cakes!! I'll start being better!!
What he looked like for the first while.

Finally, a fork!! He did not like to touch the frosting. Silly kid.

Christmas was wonderful. The kids got way to many new toys, but it has kept them busy in the past week. I cleaned out their old toys, to weed out the non essentials and organize the remaining toys, and found Gavin's Buzz and Woody dolls. I think he's been happier to see them than anything else he got at Christmas. He does love his transformers. McKinley got an art kit with more crayons, markers, paints, stamps, stickers, etc than one little girl needs. She loves it though and its portable, making it nice for trips. Jamison did not show too much interest in our holiday adventures. Matthew got a remote control helicopter, which he enjoys as well as the kids. Gavin enjoyed trying to shoot it down with his new nerf guns! We did take a trip to Grandma Susie's prior to Christmas. It was a fun visit with cousins and aunts and uncles. We always have a good laugh when my siblings and I get together. We are all fairly loud and sarcastic, so it makes for good times. My brother is a superb cook and made a delicious rib and turkey dinner. My favorite part is the vegetable tray with ranch dip. Nothing gets better than that!!

Notice Gavin's spidey pj's in the background. He also got a big fleece spidey blanket from grandma Susie. The kid loves action figures.

New Year's was spent up in Rexburg, as is tradition. We went skiing Thursday and Friday and then had our annual Christmas tree burn on Saturday. We had lots of good, dried trees. It was awesome!!! We didn't do much on New Year's eve. Matthew despises dancing, so I couldn't convince him to take me anywhere. Maybe next year. Skiing went well. Gavin can get down the hill without help and McKinley is showing greater control over her skis. Its enough that Matthew and I can continue riding our boards rather than skiing. (or attempting to ski in my case) McKinley is anxious to try out a snowboard, but we are hesitant to let her till she gets older. She's so good at skiing!
It was nice to have Matthew take a day off to go up skiing. Janean was able to keep Jamison in the ski school office, so we didn't even have to get a babysitter. She even kept McKinley and Gavin so we could take a couple runs without the kids. I'm getting better at turning down steep hills. I'm a big fat chicken!!
Funny story-today during sacrament meeting McKinley was observing our bishop's family. They have a daughter her age and they are good friends. She says to me in a "this is not fair" voice, "Mom, Abby's mom has 4 kids and we only have 3!". I explained to her that Abby's mom is a little older than I am and someday we will have 4 kids, just not right now. It is so funny what little kids worry about.
Hope everyone had a good holiday season. We didn't send out Christmas cards this year, so belated Merry Christmas to all!

EXTREME SLEDDING!!!

We decided to venture out into the snow this past Saturday and go sledding. Most of the snow here in the valley has melted, so we traveled a bit up Mink Creek Canyon. We found a closed road that served well for a beginning sledding hill.





Then there was this......




And this........


McKinley wasn't too interested in the beginner hill. Gavin had to warm up to "extreme sledding". Jamison got cold, so he and I spent part of the time in the van, exploring all the knobs and gadgets. He did enjoy sledding.

Funny story about my brain. It doesn't work too well. I'm going to claim lack of sleep. We got all the way to where we stopped to go sledding before I realized I had left my snow boots in the garage. Matthew says "well, you'll be okay in your tennis shoes". I then had to inform him that I wasn't wearing my tennis shoes. Check out my "snow shoes".


I was wearing my slippers, which are clogs, so I just slipped the elastic on my snowpants over the top. I put the back part under my heel. It worked pretty good. McKinley didn't understand why I couldn't hike up to go extreme sledding. I still had a good time.

I just like the above picture of Matthew wrecking with Jamison. This is the mild extreme hill. Gavin ran into that pole you can see on the left, which kinda soured him on sledding down the bigger hills. He finally went one last time right before we left. He's so much more cautious than McKinley.

Happy late Thanksgiving!! May you all have wonderful sledding adventures of your own!!

There's a RAT in my Kitchen!!

I made bread again today. I find it very satisfying to make bread. It makes me feel like I've accomplished something. (Even if my house is still a mess!) Anyway, the recipe I use says to make 4 loaves, but they are small loaves. We use them for sandwiches, so making such small sandwiches is perfect for the kids, but not so for my starving husband. So, this time I only made 3 loaves. I took a comparison picture so you can see the difference.
On the far left is the previous size loaf. I think I'll stick to making 3 loaves. Matthew came home from work at 5:30 and saw the beautiful loaves. Then, about 15 minutes later, we went into the kitchen to find this!! A giant RAT-boy named Gavin took bites out of each of my loaves of bread! Little stinker. We just laugh. He's so funny. He'll eat cheese like that, too. Maybe he really is a rat.