Grandpa's house

One of the things we love about living here in Idaho again is that we're near my grandparents and we get to go visit them. Before my family moved to Pittsburgh in '95 (from here, Idaho Falls), we spent so many good times there. It was my favorite place to go as a child. We would roam around the farm, hide in "the forest", play all kinds of games, climb the trees, play by the canal, go tubing in the canal, pick rasberries and strawberries and eat them, have sleep-overs in the big yard, play "Ghost in the Graveyard" late into the night, and all kinds of other things. So when we had yet another day of glorious sunshine today (yeah!!) I decided it would be fun to take the kids out to Grandpa's to visit and to "explore" the farm. They loved it! I mean Parker had been out there last summer, but since Maddie wasn't even walking then she of course hadn't. So now that they could both be out there running around and with Parker being older and way more interested in every little thing he sees, it was a lot different. Parker had to go see the tractors first of course.

Then Parker had to use the potty, so I took him to the old out house. Okay, just kidding. I didn't make him use it (he didn't really have to go), I just got them to get their pictures by it. :-) (It's filled in and everything by now of course) Then we made our way over to some old equipment that's still laying around.

And finally we ended up at the tire swing. Us kids used to spend HOURS on this thing when we were young, swinging way up high, twisting it up so we'd make ourselves sick spinning around and around. So it was fun to see Maddie having fun on it (Parker was too busy looking at other stuff so he didn't get on).

It was so fun to get pictures of the kids out on the farm where I used to play when I was little! I had such a fun childhood that I kind of wish we could guarantee my kids to grow up here like I did. But alas we can only guarantee them two years (while Ben finishes school). I guess that will have to do for now. I'm just glad we can give them at least that much! I love my grandparents so much!!

On a side note, at the end of this last semester for Ben (a week ago), he had to go up to BYU-Idaho to hand in one last thing and so me and the kids went with him. We got another picture of the family up there on campus, so here it is:

She's finally 18 months!!

Maddie has finally hit that magical and really fun age of 18 months. Wahoo!! It's magical for us because that means that she is finally old enough to go to nursery!! In our church, the kids get to go into nursery once they're old enough to be away from their parents (they're in there for two of the three meetings-Sacrament Meeting we are all together as families). They're in nursery until they turn three, and then they get to go into Primary classes. So this means that church isn't a complete wrestling match anymore and Ben and I get to actually listen in our classes!! YEAH!!

So here's some updates about our girl. We just took her to her well child checkup today. She is a whooping 19 lbs 11oz (yes, I'm being very sarcastic) and 29.5 inches, just 2 lbs and 2 inches more than at her 12 month. That puts her at the 2nd percentile for weight and 5th percentile for height. Her head is actually at the 64the percentile though (never thought of her as having a big head!). Compared to Parker at his 18 mo checkup, she weighs almost exactly the same, but is 2 inches shorter. She is STILL anemic even with iron vitamins (has been off and on for four of the last six months), but doc says that may just be how she is.

Maddie is such a funny girl. She's got so much spunk and is always doing crazy things around the house. Here's some of the things she loves to do:

She loves to walk around the house with a blanket over her head. I don't know how she doesn't run into things, but she doesn't.

Maddie LOVES blueberries, and pretty much any other kind of fruit. But especially blueberries. She also loves cheese (asks for it ALL the time), and gummies are her favorite treat.

Maddie likes to use things for something it's not usually used for. Just the other day I found her using her beach ball for a bench to sit on to play her little piano.
She always gets the toy basket and dumps it (which I groan at every time she does) and sits in it and plays. Sometimes Parker will push her around in it too (not the wicker one of course), which she loves. She also likes to play under their kid table, and Parker will usually join her under there.
She has somewhat recently learned to pull over her little chair to wherever she needs so that she can get to something she wants. She loves to do this to grab things off the counters, play with the light switches, look out the front window, and peak at what Mom's making for dinner.
Maddie loves baths. Every single time we change her diaper she asks, "Baff? Baff? Baff?"

Maddie loves her brother so much. When she wakes up in the morning or after a nap and comes out and finds Parker, she gets so excited and gives him a hug. She also loves to pretend an injury so that she can say to her brother "Ow, Ow" and he'll kiss her better. It's precious. (here Parker is kissing her "injured" hand)

But at the same time, Maddie is also quite the sass. She just love love loves to pester her brother to death. I think it's her way of getting him to pay more attention to her. An example of how she pesters is when they're sitting on the chair together (which they both love to do), she'll just reach over and put her hand in his face, and she'll start rubbing his face all over, and he'll kind of push it off, and she'll put it right back on, he'll push it off, she'll put it back on, etc. It's actually kind of funny to watch and Parker really takes it like a champ (well, most of the time). He's definitely learned to put up with a lot more than he used to.
Maddie loves is when Parker takes off the cushion of the red chair and they both climb up and "dance" on it (meaning they jump up and down). This also happens a couple of times a day, as it is one of their favorite pass times.

Maddie is also obsessed with walking on her tip-toes and walks like that all over the house..and church.. and in the stores (I get really surprised that her legs don't get tired because of how much she does it!). And she loves to go places...any place besides our house...and several times throughout the day she will go and get her shoes, stand by the door, and say "Go? Go? Go!!" and reach for the door.Maddie loves playing outside. Not only does she go to the door and ask "Go?" several times throughout the day, but she also tries to run to the backyard every time we go into the garage to get into the car. She'll grab an outside toy, go stand by the garage door and wait patiently. If we open the garage door before we've gotten her into the car (we quickly learned not to do that) then she would run out and head for the back yard where the swing set and slide are. She still puts up a little bit of a fight when we put her in her car seat instead of going out back, but she's gotten a little better.

She loves the slide, but the swings are her favorite

Maddie likes to make a mess, especially when it comes to eating. About half of the time that she eats, her food ends up in her hair and all over her face. This is not because she hasn't mastered a spoon but because she inevitably ends up ditching the spoon so that she can squish the food in her fingers, rub it on her face, and spread it in her hair. It's loads of fun for her I'm sure, but the clean up sure isn't. :-)

Here she is just from tonight, putting yogurt in her hair, over and over again.

Maddie still only has two of her top front teeth. She has all four of her bottom teeth and she has actually gotten three of her four molars (the fourth one is very close to being out), but we are still waiting for those other two top teeth to come in.

Maddie has gotten to be quite the talker these days and says at least 40 different words. She loves identifying body parts, especially eye brows (which she started saying on her own much to our surprise). She still loves doing animals sounds and besides the basic ones, she loves doing noises for frogs, owls, snakes, donkeys, turkeys, elephants, dinosaurs, and more. She tells me "pee-yew" when she has a dirty diaper, and loves asking for her "nilk" (milk). We've gotten rid of the bottle all together (we used to rock her while she drank a bottle, and then we'd put her down to sleep) and she uses just a sippy cup.

One weird quick about Maddie is what she does when she gets surprised. Most kids/people open their mouth and gasp when they are surprised, right? Well Maddie not only opens her mouth, but sticks her tongue out every time. I don't know why, but she has always done it that way. It startles some people because they think she's sticking her tongue out at them, but really she's just acting surprised. What a funny girl!

She has just grown up so fast and she definitely spices up our lives in so many ways. We just love our little girl to death!

Happy Easter!

Happy Easter everyone!! I haven't updated for a while so I have a lot of pictures, but I'll just put up our Easter ones for now (since there's a lot of those too). We had church this afternoon, but earlier this morning before church (ours starts at 1pm) we went as a family to feed the ducks down by the river and falls. This is always a favorite of the kids and since it was a nice day we decided to go.

(this goose was very daring-it ate bread out of all of our hands!)

Then yesterday we did the whole Easter Bunny thing with the kids. When they went down for their naps the "Easter Bunny" came and hid eggs for them. Then when they woke up they got to go and find them. It was funny because they'd be looking for the eggs and one would be right in front of them, and they still couldn't find it. Silly kids. But they enjoyed it and it was fun for us parents too. :-)

Parker with his first egg

Madisyn was oblivious to the other two eggs right in front of her. Of course she was a little busy concentrating on what was inside the egg. :-)

Wow, look at all those eggs!

I think she's saying "candy candy candy!" inside her head right here.

Maddie and Parker with their baskets when they were done.

Since I haven't gotten to decorate a cake lately, I decided to do one for Easter for us. I had a lot of fun doing it, and it actually turned out pretty cute I think!

We also went to visit my grandparents on Friday and Maddie was so funny with my Grandpa (her great-grandpa). She cuddled right up to him and it was so precious! She'd get down after a while and run around, and then she'd climb up to Grandpa again and sit by him and play with him. So cute. She sure does love her Great-Grandpa!

Grandma Elaine was occupied for the first while we were there, but when she was able to come out and visit Maddie loved her up too. What a cuddly girl she is!

Parker, Maddie, and Great-Grandpa Haroldsen

It has always been tradition that around Easter time, the decorative tree that is in my grandparents' house "spouts" jelly beans and becomes "The Jelly Bean Tree." Ben and I helped it spout it's jelly beans this year, and the kids had fun getting down some of the jelly beans that were on it.

Of course Maddie ended up grabbing the tree (you can see her hands around it here) and making almost all the jelly beans fall off (and fall behind the piano that the tree is over). But oh well, what can you do? We are just so grateful that we live my grandparents now and that we have them in our lives to bless us!

Wiiiiii! (amongst other things)

My cousin Esther just recently got a Wii with their tax returns. We've been over a couple of times to play, and the kids love it (well, the older kids of course-meaning us!!). They have the "Outdoor Adventures" games, and that's been the best to play because Parker and even Madisyn can do it. There's a mat that plugs into the Wii and you can run and jump on it and it does your movements on the screen. So you race each other, have jumping competitions, go kayaking, race on mine carts, rollerblade, etc. I only had our camera the first time we went over and the kids have actually gotten a lot better at it, but here's some videos of Parker and Madisyn both "running" on the Wii. Maddie is absolute hilarious to watch because she can do it so good now (like I said the video is from about 3 weeks ago, so it's kind of old). She really has no idea what she's doing and she doesn't even know it's connected to what's happening on the screen, but she has seen us do it enough that now she gets on the mat and runs like crazy on it. We did a running race between her Parker when they were both on it together just a few days ago, and she actually beat Parker by a lot!! Parker mostly likes to just jump on it, so he doesn't do the running part that great. Kenya, Esther's 4 1/2 year old, is helping Maddie on the first video, and on the second Parker is playing under my character (so see if you think it looks like me or not).

Parker has recently become obsessed with puzzles. For a family activity that we had at my Aunt's house a couple of weeks ago, she gave us some puzzles to do. Since Parker is just barely three I didn't think he could do them at all, but he completely surprised us and was totally interested in them (he's only done 12 piece puzzles before). He became so obsessed with doing them that he would wake up and immediately ask to do the puzzles. He has now done the two 54 piece puzzles that we have so many times that he's bored with them. So now I have to go and find him some new ones to do.

This next video is just a funny one of Madisyn. Parker, Maddie, and I went up to Rexburg (1/2 hour north where Ben is taking some college classes) with Ben the other day to get us out of the house and to see my old campus again. While Ben was meeting with some group members, I took the kids to a burger place to play inside their play area and to get a little bit of food. Well Madisyn just LOVED their fry sauce. In fact, she loved it so much that she eventually ended up try to drink it. It didn't work that great so she had to resort to sticking her fingers in it and licking them. So here's a video of her and Parker eating at the burger place.

Spring!! (for a few days at least)

Last week/weekend we had several days that were absolutely gorgious. It was SOOO nice to be able to take the kids out to enjoy the sunshine and they loved it. A couple of the days we only needed light jackets, and a couple of them we didn't need any jackets on at all! Man it was so nice. So the kids had fun on their riding toys, playing on the swings and slide out back, and playing in the rocks (which Parker likes to play with just like a sand box). It was beautiful all the way through Saturday, but come Sunday morning it was a whole different story. We had rain Sunday morning, then hail, then SNOW. Later on it turned back to rain again and it's been cold and gloomy since. :-( Hopefully it will warm up again so we can enjoy the outdoors again! Here's some fun pictures of the kids playing outside.

Maddie looked so funny trying to ride this big toy, but she loved it! I think she was actually on this one the most.