Once Upon A Child

I think this store is great.  I really am not such a fan of garage sales simply because I love the idea of going to one store and seeing things instead of driving around to like 5 places hoping to find something I like. So to me this store is like a huge garage sale all in one place. A branch of this store just opened here in July and I went last week and found the perfect tricycle for Jared.  Our next door neighbor has one that they park on their porch and every time Jared and I would go out to play in the front he would go try to ride it.  I was so happy to find it at such a good price and Jared thinks it is the coolest. He doesn't use the pedals much but loves to push himself along.  I have been trying to figure out what toys to get him as he is getting older.  What are some of your favorite toys for an almost 2 year old boy?  He really loves cars but I am not sure what else he would like or could really play with. 

Love this face! He is getting so big!

Jared is really talking a lot more which is fun.  His new favorite phrase is Uh-Oh!  He sounds so cute when he says it.  He does not sound so cute when he sits down on the floor and sqwuaks when he doesn't get his way. He is defiently having a harder time making good choices.  He has been so even tempered since birth and I am really going to miss it. Maybe it will come back soon. He certainly has his own opinons on what he wants to do whether or not we just told him not to or corrected him. So we have had  a lot more time-outs lately.  It's a major bummer and doesn't seem to be that effective but if we are anything we are consistent.  Church (well Sacrament meeting) was AWFUL today.  Mark was speaking and Jared and I just had to stay out in the hall. We would walk by the Nursery and he would reach toward the door longingly. He was perfect and so happy in Nursery but we couldn't get the kid to cooperate at all the first hour.  I hope our Sundays somehow improve. 

But really if you have any toy suggestions that would be great!

Here we go again...

May 10, 2009

17 weeks

August 20, 2011

17 weeks!

If everything continues to go well (yep still paranoid) we should meet our newest addition on

January 27, 2012! 

We are super excited (and paranoid at least April is but is trying to remain positive).  Mark has been asking me for a good while now when I would tell people and I just worry.  I wanted to wait as long as possible but now I am starting to show a bit and have felt this little baby move so here goes!

Things are going well, I pretty much lived on cheese quesadillas for 2 months and am happy to be over that.  I still don't get excited about eating dinner or lunch but love breakfast. I am also happy to no longer be feeling lightheaded all the time. I felt much more nauseous this time around but I think that is largely due to the fact that I was working full time with Jared up until 2.5 months before he was born and have been at home not having to go anywhere with this baby so I just had more time to not feel well.  I still think I have had it pretty good. We find out who will be joining us on September 09th!  At my 13.5 week appointment we opted to wait 6 weeks for my next appointment instead of 4 so we could go to the ultrasound instead of a regular pregnancy check up. But its been hard (really hard!!) to not go in and hear the little heartbeat and be reassured.  Any time Mark asks Jared if he thinks we are having Lydia he says "yeah" but if we ask him if we are having a boy (we had to change our name due to Mark's prinicpal.  Mark says he can't have a child named Greg major bummer!!) he doesn't say anything.  Mark is convinced it's Lydia.  We will see.

And happy 7 years of fun to us!

August 21, 2004

Ice painting and towers

Last week Jared and I learned about the letter I.  We had lots of fun ice cream themed activites and did some ice painting.

We also had some fun stacking up and then knocking down the diaper boxes that I have been saving for the last few months which doesn't relate to the letter I but was fun nonetheless. I tried to help Jared build a fort but I don't think he quite got it.  Maybe in a few months. Until then I will just keep adding to the collection and we will keep knocking our towers down. Sometimes I really don't like playing with building blocks with Jared because I can build some pretty cool towers but I never get to finish them. At least with these he lets me stack them all up before he takes it out, maybe because there aren't 50 of them.

Happy Birthday Mark!

Today is Mark's 30th birthday! We are so lucky he is in our family. I blew up 30 balloons (yep makes you pretty lightheaded) and put little message in them, Mark didn't expect that at all so it was fun.  We had some yummy ice cream cake and then opened presents.  I went to the store yesterday to find the cake he really wanted which was a thin mint cookie ice cream cake but they didn't have any!  So I went to 2 other stores with no luck.  Then I had to go to a job interivew to watch 2 kids on District 49 closure days so Mark had to go to the other store and get his own cake and he couldn't even find the one he wanted and had to settle for the Reeses Peanut Butter one. But it was still really yummy. Unfortunately he was very irritated because his school scheduled an open house for 6th graders so he had to be at school until 6:00 but the last parents didn't leave until 6:45 and he didn't even make it on the staff birthday list! So while the day turned out good it was rough getting there. But Jared and I are so happy Mark is ours and hope he knows how much we love him.

We did go and see Harry Potter on Saturday which was more for me then Mark but it was nice to go see a movie together.  And I loved the movie.  We went to a movie together last July when Mark's mom came out to visit but hadn't seen one since then.  Well Mark had but I had not. It helps not having TV so I never know if there is something out that I want to see.

One thing I do love about summer...

Are the rain/thunderstorms we get here.  We had fantastic storms last week.  There was a storm almost every afternoon.  They make me happy.  I love rain and having thunder and lightning makes it even better.  The storms cool everything down nicely and after it is over everything looks so clear.  I love the contrast of the dark clouds and the yellow fields. Since we have a fair amount of storms we also get some pretty rainbows and beautiful sunsets. I always really loved the sunsets in Rexburg as well.  I am nost sure why Rexburg always had such pretty sunsets but they really did.

I chose this day to take pictures because there was actually a full double rainbow!  The ends were super bright but it's a little tricky to see the middle but it was there a whole rainbow.

Mark's first week of school went really well.  After one week he only has 1 class out of 5 that he thinks is annoying and they aren't even close to how annoying his classes were last year so that is exciting. 

Back to school

 Mark went back to school today. He had meetings last Wednesday - Friday and today his 6th graders came to school. Mark is only teaching 6th grade this year so we are pretty stoked about that.  He only met with his first period for like 30 minutes.  The rest of the day the kids took a tour of the building, learned policies, and did some team building.  Jared and I went to school to surprise Mark with a candy-o-gram. I haven't made one forever and it was fun to put it together.

I tried to get a picture of Mark's new classroom but it is a really weird shaped room. It's really long and narrow.  This is Mark's 3rd year teaching here and each year he has had a new classroom.  Sadly, he could not get his amazing floor to ceiling map to fit in this room.  It was a sad realization.  Hopefully this will be a great school year, it would be diffiuclt for it to be more annoying then last year but he does work in public education... so we are hoping for the best. I know Mark will do a great job and only 1 month till that special FALL feeling comes into the air. ♥