Conversation with Conrad

Tonight as I was laying Conrad down for bedtime, doing the usual routine of brushing teeth, then having a drink of water, we started to say prayers.

He interrupted me and asked, "Who is Heabenly Father?"

I explained how we have an earthly father and a father up in heaven. He started to tell me that heaven is clear far far away, so I told him that when we pray we can feel Heavenly Father close to us, that we can feel Him inside our heart (I patted Conrad on his chest) and that He makes us feel happy and good.

He replied, "I am watering Heabenly Father down right now!" And he took a few more gulpfuls of water. I laughed my head off.

Daughter

I think she'll be potty-trained by the end of this year soley from watching her big brother figure it out. I have to shut the bathroom door or else she goes in there and plays. (GROSS) Except she has now figured out how to open doors...


That girl loves to climb. She'll climb on the stool and hang out while I make meals. Tonight she climbed on a chair and was pulling apart my junk cabinet (pencils/screw drivers/markers/paper clips) all over the floor. Luckily she is my 2nd baby. If it were Conrad I would've had a conniption fit.
Running!

She's our little happy door greeter. Actually, she gets a thrill out of saying a combination of the following, "open!...shut! up!...down! on!...off!" Sounds more like "O-peeee...down!" We had 3 lightbulbs burn out this last week from her climbing up and turning on and off the lights. Give ya an idea?

Oh yeah, and she's really into hitting. What do you do?

It is so hard to take her little smiling face seriously when she's testing us. We'd just rather scoop her up in our arms and kiss her face off.

Journaling note: her first molars are ALMOST coming through. Whenever she is going number two (or after) she says yucky, but sounds more like, "geeyucky." It's helpful, now I don't have to check her! (Though she's been saying it sometimes just to get my attention. She's smart, it works!)

She is so pleasant. She plays independently so well! She goes to nursery great, she just goes right in and plays with the toys. Loves it. I love that she loves it!

Awesome, a post about Austin and Conrad

Austin taught Conrad this move. (P.S. Austin is the 4 year old boy I baby-sit. More like, have come train Conrad how to be nice. :D )
This is Austin. He says "Awesome!" all the time, thus the title of this post.

There are those boys in the back... Austin's got the hand pose- Conrad's gettin there. (Amelia and ShyAnne/Cheyenne up front)

Looking for a specific toy.

Just coloring, hanging out, chatting about if Lightning McQueen or The King is faster.

Superheroes!

Austin is good at posing for the camera. Conrad could care less!

Amelia keeping her distance.

Gotta love wrestling if you're going to be Conrad's friend.

Conrad bumped his head once and came to me requesting his helmet. Made me chuckle.

Thank heaven for little boys. Especially ones that teach other little boys so their mom doesn't have to work so hard. :)

Flying Time

Remember when Amelia was the baby in the bouncing chair? Yeah, she's huge now! This is ShyAnne/Cheyenne (I don't know how they spell it), the baby I baby-sit. She's a very very good baby.
Isn't she adorable? She'll smile at anything, it is so fun! I think she's about 5 months old.

Look at that hugeness. It baffles me.

She's 20 months old now. Conrad was 20 months old when Amelia was born. Crazy crazy crazy. (and thankful thankful thankful to not have another newborn now! [aaaaggghh!!!!]

Popping, blueberries (and a message for McKall)

Conrad WAS going to save these packing bubbles for McKall, so they could pop them together (they had a bonding moment back in Utah over some packing bubbles). This was just a funny moment that I happened to catch on camera.

Snowy Winter Weather

This is the picture of my parent's backyard a day before we left Utah. It was deep!

Came back to Missouri and found the same amount (if not more!) This day the temperature high was like 5 degrees.
Josh just finished showing Conrad how you can eat snow. He didn't forget that the cardinal rule to eating snow is to NOT EAT YELLOW SNOW.

The first day of the snow melt. It was 45 degrees! Conrad and Luke went and played for a couple of hours outside, it was awesome. See the little snowman? Yeah, they had help. Cute Heidi helped, a lot.
Here they are getting ready to sled down the big hill. Spastic boys. Luke was so nice and let Conrad ride on HIS sled almost the whole time, and Luke's sled was way more awesome.

The snow is gone. 7 days later. I am not complaining!

coming soon...

a new post!

promise!

been busy being a single parent. I have Josh home this weekend so it may just happen!

Are we human?

Or are we dancers?


then again, are we human?

too much TV

Yesterday I served up some beef stew for dinner. When Conrad saw it he said, "Yuck! Meatloaf again?"

what the?

Then when I was giving him his bath we were having a conversation about how Daddy was going to be home in fifteen minutes and that we better finish up soon... he said,

"Don't get mad, get glav!"

Oh, it's from those darn commercials on nickelodeon. I had a good laugh over it, though!

The first few days back home

we made the caramel apples we had been dreaming about ever since we got the caramel apple kit from my parents. Result: SO GOOD!
And a lot of nothing...

The kids just played so well together that I was able to catch up on a lot of things. They had their attention buckets filled from being around family. And they had practically a new house with a lot of new toys to play with. It was good.

Sorry, not too exciting of a post. Just journaling!

Coming up for air

It's been a while since I've had a decent blog post. We've been home now for 4 nights. But you know what they say, "when you get home from a vacation you need another vacation to recuperate." The last 4 days have been pretty busy. Between laundry, unpacking, cleaning, recovering sick kids, grocery shopping, preparing a lesson for Relief Society and P O T T Y T R A I N I N G I have been busy. But do you know what?

I love it. There's nothing like a good hard days work. (The fact that Josh has been home has also been awesome.)

Conrad regressed 100% with potty training while we were in Utah. He has no desire to be potty trained anymore either. I was ready to just give it up for another month while he got his bearings about him, but Josh has been Mr. Motivational here and found (hopefully) the key to Conrad getting through with this. Conrad never gets to chew gum, he always swallows it. So, if he can go 14 days consecutively without any accidents he gets a gumball machine. (Is that too much gum?!? With a limit of 1 gumball per day... I'm obliging. It's a compromise I'll take!)

Josh is doing an Orthopedic Surgery rotation this month. Today was just orientation, he got home by 10 am and said it was a pretty big waste of a drive. We hope this month answers the pressing question, "WHAT DOES JOSH WANT TO BE WHEN HE GROWS UP?"

By the way, our high on Thursday is supposed to be 4 degrees. The wind chill will put us at -30 degrees. Can you believe that? Just like in Finland up by the North Pole where Uncle Boyd and Aunt Dianne are serving their mission right now. I took advantage of the temperature today and went grocery shopping when it reached into the double digits. Brrrrrrr.

I am so grateful to be where I am today in my life. 2 kids. Wife. Mom. Active church-goer. Trying to be better. It is fun!

By the way, New Year's Resolutions anyone? I am still too tired to make any big commitments to resolutions, but some crossing through my head are... read scriptures every day, never let a kind thought go without action. I have been lacking in my spiritual resolutions in past years, and I have a feeling this year is going to be good in that area.

Look for pictures soon. Coming sometime this year, I promise! (Ok, it's mostly for me, but you know, I like to pretend that you can't wait either). :)

Of course I have been debating going public again just to get more comments. I love them, so leave them!