Our Family

While the kids and I were in Tucson, my sister-in-law Heather (Ben's youngest sister) moved in with us. So the first weekend we were back we took her to Jackson Hole (Wyoming). It's this cute little western tourist town right in a valley in the mountains. The drive up there was gorgeous and it was cool to go around the shops and see all of their things (lots of pricey artwork, statues, furniture, home furnishings, etc). Even though it was just the beginning of October, it was cold up there already (30 degrees the day we went I think). Next year we're definitely going a little earlier in the season!

In the middle of their town they have a park area that has antler arches at each entrance. The boy scouts went and collected the antlers from around the area and they built the arches out of them.

This was the first snow the kids saw this season and I think that was probably their favorite part!

Ice cream! (even though it was freezing)

(she was concentrating very hard on getting all the ice cream)

I love the beautiful mountains!!

Maddie turned two on October 13th. I made her a monkey cake and we had a few friends over to celebrate. I know everyone says this about their kids, but I can't believe how fast she has grown!!

Here's Maddie's two yr studio photos

We got to go to a pumpkin patch to pick out our pumpkins this year. They had a train there (which Parker really liked, and yet was afraid of), a hay maze, food to eat, and of course pumpkins to pick.

We took Heather up to Rexburg to see the campus and the new temple. The leaves were still changing colors there which made the gardens beautiful. The kids enjoyed watching the fish in the different ponds and running around in the leaves.

The new Rexburg LDS Temple

For Halloween we made tombstone cupcakes, carved our big pumpkins from the pumpkin patch, painted mini pumpkins with the neighbors, and went trick-or-treating.

Trick-or-treating at Melaleuca:

Video of the kids trick-or-treating

I also got their Halloween pictures taken at a studio.

It has been quite a long time since I posted (like two months!). I have lots of excuses, but I won't bore anyone with them. :0) We have been doing well and doing lots of things, so this posting is going to be very long!

I took the kids (including Taylor, the little girl I babysit weekdays) to the zoo here in Idaho Falls a few weeks ago. It was actually a pretty good sized zoo for being in such a small town. The kids haven't been to a zoo in a LONG time (and it was Maddie's very first time to a zoo), and they just loved it.

Parker (3), Taylor (20 months) & Maddie (19 months) by the seals

Maddie & Parker in the petting zoo

Parker by the lion fountain. This fountain has been there FOREVER! It was there back in the day when I was little and lived in Idaho Falls (we moved to Pittsburgh in '95).

Maddie looking at the lions

Parker by a monkey. It had fallen asleep in the window like that.

Maddie was so taken back by the monkeys! I think she couldn't believe that there were live, moving monkeys, since she'd only ever seen pictures of them.

Madisyn was actually trying to climb up this tiger even though it was way too humongous for her, crazy girl

Spring has brought beautiful weather and we have loved being outside just about everyday. We have surprisingly had a LOT of rain lately though (which is highly unusual for Idaho) and I think we definitely don't have to worry about a drought this year. Luckily when it rains it doesn't usually last all day, so we have still been able to do a lot outside. We bought a tee-ball set for Parker, and Ben took him out one day to try it out. He did pretty good, although his patience wasn't that long for it. He just wanted to swing the bat around after a while (typical boy!).

Daddy helping Parker get started

Parker going at it himself

Maddie had fun playing in the rocks while Parker was playing tee-ball

I love this girl's silliness!!

Maddie has been in to trying to dress herself lately. She loves to get her pants and shirt on (with help) and tries so hard to get socks and shoes on by herself. Then a couple of weeks ago I had just gotten the kids out of the bath and had started to get them dressed. I was getting clothes out of their drawers when I looked over and saw Maddie trying to get a pair of Parker's underwear on over her diaper. She was so determined and trying very hard, so I helped her out. She and Parker had quite a fun time running around together with underwear on. It was cute.

hugging each other

Then again the other day when I was putting laundry away, they each grabbed a pair of underwear and put them on their heads as "hats." I hope my kids don't become too obsessed with underwear!!

We babysat my friend's little girl, Joslin. She was 11 months old (I think she just had her 1st birthday) and was WAY cute. Madisyn just loves little babies and just couldn't keep her hands off of Joslin. It was funny because Joslin (who is 8 months younger than Maddie, but has very tall parents) is as big as Maddie.

best friends forever??

Parker got his very first nursery wound. Of course, it was self inflicted. The kids were cleaning up the blocks and he was helping, but also running around while he was "helping." He went to put a block in the container and fell forward and landed on the edge of it. He had a fat lip (as you can see), his tooth punctured the outside of his lip, he had a big red bruise there, and he had a black bruise on his gums above his front tooth. It was a lot of bleeding just because of the location, but he tried to be brave. He's got a scar there from it now, but hopefully he will have learned not to run around in church!

This is just a funny picture I thought I'd include. When Parker gets in trouble, he goes in "time-out" and recently I've added putting his nose on the wall when he's really in trouble (it's quite more effective than just regular time-out). Madisyn thinks it's cool (she thinks anything Parker does is cool), so she often goes over and joins him and I have to stop her so she doesn't distract Parker. This particular day, however, they were BOTH being bad so when she went over and joined him, I let her.

We also got off of Craigs List a new toy for our house. The kids have had so much fun with it. It takes up our entire living room so we bring it out completely only sometimes, but we'll let them play with just parts of it sometimes too (like we have just the tent out, or the "house" and one of the tubes, etc.

The other day I had just the tubes out for the kids and they were being so silly with them. They love to stand inside of them while they "hide" and then they pop out of them which of course produces lots of laughs and giggles. Parker also loves to roll around the living room and down the hall inside one of the tubes too, although I'm still so surprised that he never runs in to a million things.

I have found a new hobby. While I still love making cakes... (this is one I made for a baby shower)

...my friends and I have recently learned to decorate hair clips. They are so fun and so easy, and I love making them!! Here are some of the clips I've made:

and here are some of the bugs I have made.

The bugs are a little big more time consuming and a little trickier, but I actually like making these the most. My friend's friend is opening a baby boutique store in August and she is going to have us start selling them there. We're so excited!!!

And here's a little update about Maddie. Have you noticed anything different about her in the last few months? Well, here's a picture of her taken back in January.

and another in February. See all her hair? See how long it was getting? See how gorgeous it was??? . . .

. . . And then this was her in early April.

What?????

So around the end of Feb/early March, Maddie's hair started falling out. This was quite alarming I assure you. We took her to the doc who said he had never seen a toddler's hair fall out like this, and he sent us to a dermatologist. Well it ended up being a simple but ridiculous cause. Because Maddie had been anemic from Oct-Feb, it had paused her hair growth. Then once her hair started growing again when she was finally not anemic (it took FOREVER for us to get her levels back up!), it was pushing all the dead hair out to made room for the new growing hair. So she was losing her hair. It was funny though, because most of the hair she lost was from her right side of her head and not from her left. As you can see from the picture above, she lost most of her bangs and as you can kind of see from the picture below, she's pretty close to having a bald spot on the back of her head on her right side. We've had to trim her hair several times to even it up so that she wouldn't have hair down to her shoulders on her left side, and practically no hair on her right. Poor girl!!

But at last her hair has finally finally finally started to grow back. She has bangs again and her hair is long enough (beside her baldish spot) for me to put hair clips in again. We'll see how long it takes before I can put her hair in pig tails again (pout pout).

Our whole family will be in Pittsburgh for six weeks starting July 28th (July 28th-Sept 8th) while Ben has that time in between semesters. Me and the kids get to spend lots of time with my family and friends that are there, and Ben will be helping my sister with her home security business there. Well, that's all for the update for now. Hopefully it won't take me two months again to post, but we'll see. Hope you're all doing well!!