My boys

this morning at breakfast...


I kinda love that my boys are finding more and more ways to bond as they are getting older. Spencer and Chase are 3.5 years a part and now at *almost* 8 and 4.5, they are becoming a lot closer. Finally. I love it.

Today I laughed (at 7:05am) when I walked down the hall towards the boys room to see Spencer fully dressed for the day already (love that morning person in him) and pint-sized Chase following him: matching flannel shirts open and all.

Chase has taken to wanting to be like Spencer a lot more lately. And it's just in little ways. First it started with not sleeping with a shirt on

(old crazy bedtime picture)



to wanting to wear the same converse shoes all the time, to requesting the same color cup now at breakfast time.



I love these boys of mine!

(yesterday in San Diego--not staged. Chase put his arm around his brother)

Baby Jane

My sister (and I) have this awesome friend named Angela who is a very talented photographer in Utah. Carrie invited Angela to be a part of her birth experience with Baby Jane and her pictures and story is well, awesome. Just awesome.

Since I can't do a better job than Miss Angela, here is her blog:

http://angelamariephoto.com/blog/

This was back on December 2nd and what a treat to have made it JUST in time to see Jane born into this world. I literally got off the plane, drove to Pleasant Grove, arrived at 4:25 and Jane was born at 5:10pm. How is THAT for timing? When I walked in with all my winter gear/coat on---I couldn't wait to get to that birthing room! What an incredible feeling to get to be there.

So go read all about it! And isn't my sister just beautiful during the birth? Just isn't quite fair to be that good lookin' doing all that work! I'm so proud of her, and love my new niece so much it hurts!

More of my own pictures to come....

Beach day 2011

Today was our first Beach day of 2011. On January 17th. It was nearly 76 degrees today.



It was perfection.

Now not all beach days are perfection in our family. Sometimes it's a lot of work and you wonder why you go through the effort ( like: lots of annoying sand in crevices of little bodies that result in complaining and then sand in my car on the way home mixed with grouchy & hot kids you're trying to drag to the car along with the load of now really messy beach toys and wet towels), but today sure TOTAL perfection. Not any of the above.






Kai, Spencer & Connor


Spencer and his friends built a really cool fort out of sticks on the beach. I mean, it was really cool. They had a front door & even a pretty appropriate "flag" draped on top...

Connor & Spencer showing off the inside


A nice day with friends. Made me look forward to summer. But don't get me wrong, I will still LOVE the upcoming "winter weather" that I know comes here in February, but it was fun to get out today and have a "taste" of Summer 2011!

"Burps"

Preface: Chase calls farts, "burps"

So this morning he "burps" and says, "Excuse me!"

then it was:

"Hey Mom, if you "burp" and then say "excuse me" really really fast, does it make the "burps" smell good instead of bad and smelly?"

Bwahahahaha!

Good times with this kid.

The following are pre-school Christmas pictures 2010 that I couldn't bring myself to buy at $20 per page (yikes!) but I did snap a lil' picture of them with my camera so I could save a snapshot to save for his posterity(shhh!)

Private

It's time to make this blog private.

Please comment me with your name/email so I know if you're interested in being included on my invite list. I'm shooting for making the switch by January 12th (ish...)

Thanks friends!

And then there were two...

So today Spencer and Leda headed back to school after a nice 2-week Holiday break. Spencer off to Mrs. Hepner's 2nd grade class and Leda off to Mrs. Brown's Kindergarten.

Which left me and the bubs (and his cute bedhead) to our lonesome.


(Which I fully admit is a bit lonesome)

And I wanted to document some things about my school-aged children this morning.

At 6:45am when my awful alarm clock went off, it was rainy and wet outside and warm and dark inside.

I just hated that I had to wake Spencer. But when I did, he was up and at 'em. Just like that. A bit groggy, but ready to take on the day.

Chase was too (grrr) despite my best effort to coax him to go back to bed while he still could.

Then Leda heard our rustling next door and she was up too. I also tried to coax her back to bed, as Kindergarten didn't start for hours yet. Yet at the sound of my coaxing voice, she broke down into a million tears and pouted about a) my request for her to go back to bed and b) that it was "return to school day".

Man alive are these two ever different. Spencer only cries if there's blood or if Uncle Rob and Aunt Blythe go back to UT after a nice Christmas visit.

Spencer was out the door with a grin. To be fair, the grin was not much about school starting, but the fact that he had chosen today to eat a school lunch (he gets school lunch once a week) AND I had finally given him the a-okay to order a "fruit 66" drink at lunch today. Apparently it's what all the cool kids are drinking.

Leda on the other hand, proceeded to be whining and clingy all morning long. And when it was time to get dressed in the outfit she had picked the night before: there were a million and a half reasons why the outfit wouldn't work today. But I stuck to my guns. (and stretched out her leggings because they were too tight on her ankles--insert eye roll)

Next, I let her pack her own snack and kindly filled a water bottle with gatorade as a "treat" since she was so wary about being back in school. Upon school arrival, I was expecting a full on break down, but nope! Out the car door she bounced. All smiles while saying, "There's my friend!" and "BYE MOM!! See ya later!"

HOW does she turn on a dime like that? Stinker.

Which left me with this one. Building puzzles and practicing how to say the word "cereal" as "seeeeeareal" (Bubs has some speech things going)



And although he's my stinker of all stinkers, it's been a nice quiet morning with my Chase. And he doesn't seem too affected by being sibling-less. At least not yet. He does at least have puzzles and seeeareal to distract.

Here's to a New Year and back to routine!

circa 1979

Stumbled on this old photo the other day (that I'd forgotten about) and I love it SO much.

Me and my 13-months-younger-sister. 1979.

I'm two, Carrie is one.

Loving the Santa face and that he just went with it.

(and I still maintain, that sisters, who are 13-months apart, who are still best friends, should never live in different states. And should never be raising our children in different states)

But I digress.

Aren't we adorable? Absolutely adorable?

What a treasure!

Fruit

So the kids and I visited our local Grower's Market last week to load up on fruit. They each got to pick what they wanted to take home. Spencer picked Mangos, Leda picked blueberries & blackberries and Chase chose bananas. Mom chose strawberries and apricots.

On our way home we had a talk about good food and it was decided that one could get smart by feeding your brain good food.

And we had a big, nice fruit salad with dinner that night. Yum.

So tonight at dinner I asked Spencer to let Lucy outside. Before doing so Spencer asked, "Are we sure the side gate is shut?"

Leda quickly replied, "Yes! It's shut!" Wanna know how I know it's shut, Mom? Because I've been eating fruit a lot and getting really really smart since yesterday, so I just know!"