Look Alike Meter

Last night Mark and I were looking at old blog posts that I wrote about Jared when he was around this age.  I am so happy that I have this blog.  It works great as our "family journal" and its fun in this case to see what Lydia may be doing soon. I am so lucky that I have had such easy babies! They are so good natured. I came across the post I did for Jared with the look-alike meter and decided to do Lydia's now. Any guesses on who she looks more like?



It's funny to me that our son looks more like me and our daughter looks more like Mark.  Jared was just 3 % more like me and Lydia is just 4% more like Mark so really they are a pretty good mix.  We were at a wedding Saturday and a friend was looking at Lydia and trying to figure out who she looked more like and she came to the conclusion that Lydia looks the most like Jared.  We have such cute sweet kids!

3 months

Already!
We are so happy that Lydia is part of our family.  She is a super sweet, happy, healthy kid.  She is easily soothed and very undemanding. It's so great.  At church yesterday a woman stopped me in that hall and commented that she "is so cute, she looks so happy and healthy just like a baby should." At her last check up she was 11.5 pounds but I am pretty sure she is at 12 pounds now and was almost 22 inches.  She still has her "weepy eye". The Doctor said it is a clogged tear duct and if she still has it at 6 months they will probably do surgery.  I hope it goes away soon.  We wash/massage it all the time but if you have any great suggestions we would love to hear them.

She looks like a little mushroom here like the dancing ones from Fantasia, found below.

First Daddy Daughter Date

Mark took Lydia out on their first (of what we plan to be many of) Daddy-Daughter Date.  A family in our ward is having an open house for their son who is leaving on a mission this week.  I am sure they will have a lovely time. Mark took me on a date today as well.  We went over to the brand new Tucanos here in town and ate so much food!  It's so funny that they built one like 5 minutes from our house seeing as it is Mark's all time favorite restaurant.

Here are this years porch flowers.  It is so windy here that after losing two baskets of hanging flowers last year we opted for this stylish planter box. I love how it turned out. We went ahead and put hanging ones in the back since the fence blocks a lot of wind. And that is all the planting I plan on engaging in.  And really Mark did most of it. I just don't get the enjoyment from gardening as some do but I am happy to report that our tulips and daffodils have bloomed.  A whole week earlier then last year. Happy Spring!

We built it!

Jared absolutely loves to be outside.  Our town home has a small little backyard that is pretty much the perfect size for Jared. Well he would be happy with more space but we are glad it is as little maintenance as it is.  Last summer I felt sort of bad for him because there wasn't very much for him to do back there so this spring I convinced Mark to build a sandbox for him.  It of course turned out to be more involved then I thought it would be (500 pounds of sand!!) but Jared thinks it is pretty awesome.   And I think Mark is pretty awesome, about half way through his drill randomly stopped working.  Completely.  He charged it overnight, tried all sorts of angles, nothing.  So Mark was more then a little sore the next day from screwing the screws in by hand.
As mentioned before Jared really enjoys helping me bake/cook.  He is great at pouring and dumping and mixing.  We made some delicious Mini Cadbury Egg cookies for Easter and I let him lick the beater, he thought it was Amazing!

And here is little Miss Lydia at 12 weeks!  She makes so many cute little noises I love it.  I look at these pictures and can't get over how round her little face is! It's like a perfect little cirlce.  I finally made it to the doctor for my "6 week" check up and he and the nurse both commeneted on her chubby cheeks!  They are pretty fun.

Silly little cutie.

Happy Easter

We've had a lot of Easter fun this past week.  We made Easter snacks and art projects, dyed eggs, and hunted eggs twice. We also had a little Easter photo shoot. I attended the annual Easter Cantata by Sally Deford with a good friend and it was really nice to go out and be uplifted.  I love the power of music and am so grateful there are people who share their talents. We watched a few of the bible videos and now anytime Mark or I are on the computer Jared exclaims "Jesus, Again" and asks to watch "another".  I love how excited he gets about gospel related things. Jared is going through a (hopefully short) phase of really not listening and exercising his independence which is not fun at all. When we ask him to stop doing something he says 'I'm silly!" and we say "No, you're being naughty."  His definition of silly is very different then ours. He is a cute little boy though and it was fun to celebrate Easter with him.
 

The delicious orange bunny rolls back by popular demand.

Hunt # 1

Colorado may be green by June...

2012 eggs

Last year he wouldn't wear these ears for anything and this year he didn't want to take them off. He is looking so grown up and handsome.

 Hunt # 2

   If you look in the corner you can see our tulips and daffodils are starting to grow!

Mark and I color-coordinated our outfits but didn't quite succeed with the kids.

Lydia's Photo Shoot:

10.5 weeks!

She is such a sweetheart.  Happy and easily soothed. 

We love our little bunnies!

Spring Break

Even though it was a TON of driving (3,369 miles!!) and an unexpected root canal for Mark we did enjoy our spring break.  We went from Colorado Springs, CO to Saratoga Springs, UT to Elko, NV (where we got to stay with the Gerbers from Egypt, so great to catch up) to Medford OR, to Yuba City, CA back to Medford back to Yuba City then back to Saratoga Springs then home. Crazy right? Jared and Lydia did awesome in the car!  There were only one or two times that we had some mini melt downs which is really amazing. No tickets and no car problems.  Jared did get car sick and throw up an hour and a half into our ten hour drive to Utah but we survived. Luckily Mark knows that drive really well and knows what stores are at every exit in Nevada so we got some Febreeze and were off again. We had a lot of fun visiting with family and friends (thanks again to all those who made the effort to meet up with us!) but are SO GLAD to be home!!

Highlights:

California: enjoyed nice warm weather and went to parks and played outside A LOT so Jared was thrilled.  Stopped by my mom's school so she could "show us off"' (her words not mine). Took Jared to Chuck-E-Cheese for the first time (Jared wasn't too impressed with the pizza or interested in that many rides but he did choose a few favorites.) and caught up with my brothers, one sister, my two nephews and both my Grandmas.

The clear winner: The flying Bike

 Suspended jungle gym, Aunt Tara was a sport and climbed in with Jared.

 Mini Carousel

Meeting Aunt Tara and Uncle Davin

Medford OR: we took advantage of the one truly sunny day and headed to the park, had a great time visiting with Mark's family, blessed Lydia, attended Mark's nephew's Eagle Court of Honor and Mark spent a lot of time at his brother's dental office.  



 Jared wanted to be outside all the time but Oregon is a rather rainy place.

Saturday March 24th:  We had the opportunity to bless Lydia.  Mark did a great job during the blessing. We so appreciate David and Cecily letting us use their home to bless her and all the family who came up.   

First Family photo!

 Lydia is such a sweetheart. 

She looked just like a little angel in her blessing dress.  She was not so angelic during the blessing but did a great job before. You win some you lose some.  

 My parents

Mark's family

♥

Utah: We visited with Grandma Sue and had two great family dinners.   We rode TRAX (Utah's public train system) to Temple Square and loved walking around the temple.  I think it was the highlight of the whole trip for Jared. he asked to go again and ride the train more.

On the train.

The temple grounds were beautiful! I couldn't stop taking pictures! It was so fun to see how excited Jared was.  He loved the water and being at the temple. I can only imagine how excited he would be at Christmas time. One of these years we will have to take him.

 We think it would be awesome if Jared chose to marry someone here and we could put this picture up at their reception.  Could he be any cuter? We didn't even ask him to sit like that he posed himself.

 Jared was more interested in sliding down the steps but a kind lady offered to take our picture and this is the best we got. 

We sang Popcorn Popping  a lot on this trip! I love these trees.

Amazing flowers everywhere!



I love how happy Jared gets when he sees temples, even when its just pictures of them.  Utah was like a dream come true for him! Next time we go we will have to take a day and go to all the temples in the Utah valley he could see like 5 in one day!

While we enjoyed our trip but there is nothing quite like Home Sweet Home.