Texas Surprise!

As a surprise for my mother-in-law for her 60th birthday Scott, Ethan and I flew to Texas. We stayed with Scott's brother in Dallas and they came up with an excuse for Linda and Dave to come up for the weekend. Friday afternoon, they arrived to a wonderful surprise. Danny and Amanda's family, my family, and great grandma Shehorn were all there. Yeah, we surprised her all right. Especially when there was no plans for a Texas visit this year due to my pregnancy. But we decided to have the party a couple weeks early so I could come down before I started my 3rd trimester. It worked and it was so much fun to get together again and have the cousins play.Almost everyone... Scott is taking the picture and Aunt Carol came down the following day for another surprise for Linda.

We had a great time catching up and watching the kids play. Ethan really loved playing with Hannah. It was nice to see Ethan break from his shyness and get to know his grandparents and family he doesn't see very often.

This is a cute video of Hannah and Ethan.

Here are some pics of a few of our outings. We had nice weather, if you compared it to Utah's weather right now. We had a lot of wind, but nice enough weather that I got a nice sunburn.

Sunday... We had a nice day and Danny and Amanda got out the Jump House and Ethan loved it. He LOVES to jump!

Later on Sunday we walked up to a nearby park and flew kites. Ethan was entertained only for a few minutes... His interests were on the playground and the awesome slides. Scott was determined to get that kite up as high has he could. Eventually he succeeded!

Here are the cousins... Rachel, Ethan and Hannah... How we got them to sit still is still a mystery!

On Monday, we went to a "new big park," as Ethan called it. It was pretty fun watching Ethan run around and play. I told Scott he had to chase after him, there was no way I could keep up.

Monday night we had a true Texas storm with hail bigger than quarters. Thank goodness it didn't wake the kids.

A HUGE Thank you to Danny and Amanda for putting this all together. We enjoyed out time there and next time it will be our turn...

Binky Troubles...

After 2 1/2 years Ethan said goodbye to his binky. Ethan wasn't too excited to say goodbye and had many tears longing for his precious "pretty", but it had to be done. I tried Alicia's idea and put his binkys in an envelope and pretended to mail them, which eventually went into the garbage. Ethan didn't understand that concept and he still longed for his binky. He would start looking for it all over his bed and it didn't matter how many times I told him that it was gone he looked and asked for it. 2 weeks later, he doesn't ask for his pretty any more, but I know he is still missing it. Naptime and bedtime has been harder with him begging for cuddle time. It takes us over an hour sometimes to finally get him to sleep. Unfortunately, I have to become the mean mommy and send my baby to bed crying (which is something that is very hard for me to do). I hope Ethan will soon go back to his old sleep habits, which means, he liked naptime and bedtime and would stay in bed and go to sleep. But until then, at least I can say that the dreaded binky is gone! I think with my new little one I will make sure the binky is taken away before she is out of the crib, that way she can't escape...

I bid thee farewell!

Geico

Ethan has an obsession with Geico, yes, the car insurance place. He sees the commercials of the money with the googly eyes and he gets very excited and says "watch Geico..." We pass a billboard and he says, "see Geico." The other day we got a letter from Geico and I gave it to Ethan and told him to hold Geico and he wouldn't give up the letter. We would be somewhere and he would just blurt out, "watch Geico." I guess Geico's advertising campaign is working for my 2 year old.

Infamous Yellow Shirt

This is Scott and I at the hospital with Ethan... Over 2 years ago. This is the yellow shirt. If you ask any of his family members, especially those living in Texas, he is always wearing this shirt and it has been around for a long time. Longer than we've been together, which is 5 years... This morning Ethan wanted to wear his new yellow shirt with green stripes. He made the comment, "Wear yellow shirt, like daddy." "Daddy, has yellow shirt, too"... Let's just say this yellow shirt is very memorable. If I remember right, Scott wore this on Sunday for his trip to Chicago...

Our Bathroom's New Floor

So when we moved into our home, yes, we had carpet in our bathroom. Let's just say we have a builder that was very cheap and wanted us to upgrade on things like vinyl for our bathroom floor. Anyways, we do have a pretty big bathroom, if that is any kind of an excuse. After 3 1/2 years we finally decided to remove the carpet and put down tile. Thanks to Chris (my brother-in-law) we were able to get it done at a reasonable cost. We love our new tile, but Ethan soon discovered if he dropped his cup, it will easily open and spill... As I found out on Sunday while trying to get out the door to church and had to hurry and clean up spilt milk.


Before.. with carpet




After... with tile

Grandma's Scrapbook

Make a Smilebox scrapbook

This is my first attempt with digital scrapbooking.

We made a special book with all the grandkids with grandma and grandpa for my mom's 60th birthday. Enjoy!

The BIG 60!

I know everyone would say that they have the best mom, but of course I think that my mom is the best and I have my 2 brothers and 2 sisters to back me up. My mom had a big birthday this weekend, her 60th! My siblings and I got together and wanted to do something extra special for her birthday. She is always doing things for us kids and her grandkids and we wanted to try to give a little back. Though there is no way to catch up with everything she has done for us, but at least we can give her a surprise of her life.


Our plan was to surprise mom with a party with decorations and presents. Nathan and Rene's family was even coming down to surprise her. It was going to be great and mom and dad (he can't keep a secret) wouldn't expect a thing. Unfortunately, this past Monday we got a call that my Aunt Narda passed away and the funeral was scheduled on, you guessed it, on Saturday... Mom's birthday. Of course the family wanted to go to the funeral and pay our respects to Aunt Narda... after all, she has been a huge part of ALL of our lives. But what are we going to do about the surprise for mom. We still wanted to give her a birthday she'll always remember. And we did...


We went to the funeral down in Provo and left right after to get a pic of the grandkids, that was a very important part of our gift to mom. Jaime stayed with mom and dad at the funeral to be our spy and to keep my parents away as long as she can. We were able to get the grandkids together and got their pic taken.


Aren't they cute! We are so shocked that they sat still and smiled for this camera... After all, it already has been a long day.


We did some decorating and waited. Jaime was on her way home with my parents. We were all downstairs waiting with anticipation. Finally, they're home and .... SURPRISE!!! My mom was definitely surprised. She had the tears, as we predicted. We did what we sent out to do... give my mom a birthday she always remember.

Here is a video of the surprise... Don't pay any attention to the stupid voice behind the camera. I sounded really weird and I couldn't even sing on key... oh, well.

Here are some other random pics of the night and party. It was a lot of fun and the kids were so tired. Mom got her pics of the grandkids, a scrapbook of pics of grandma and grandpa with their grandkids and a gift certificate to a nice getaway for their anniversary.

Play Cars

Ethan loves to "play cars." That is, he loves to watch either Scott or I play MarioKart on the Wii. He takes one of the steering wheels and pretends he is driving. He has to have the character Baby Mario. He requests the game almost daily, more if he can get away with it. He is starting to repeat the characters' sayings and sound effects from the game. After each race he always asks for "one more" and gets sad when one more is really the last one and the game has to be turned off. I hate to say, we are starting to use MarioKart as a bribe to get him to eat his meals, to clean up or take his naps. For the most part it works and gets him moving. I think if Ethan had his way he would play cars 24/7... Thank goodness he is only 2 and doesn't always gets his way...

Travelin' Man Update

Scott's travels continues... We've been lucky to have Scott home a lot throughout February. The first quarter of the year tends to be slow for Scott's work, but add the economy on top of that, things seem a little slower than usual. At least I think so. We are hoping things start to pick up more in the coming months. But here is an updated list of Scott's travels. The parentheses mean the number of times he's been somewhere.

Herndon, Virginia (2)
New York City, NY
Dallas, TX