End of the School Year and Avery is 10 Months!

It has been a busy month as usual! The boys were both doing tons of fun things for the end of their school year. Caleb's preschool ended in the second week of May with a field trip to Bear World. I went along with him and his class on the bus and got to see the bears too! They had all the cute little bear cubs out for us to watch. We also saw elk, antelope, bison, mountain goats, wolves, a moose, ducks, a peacock, a goose, goats, deer, and a very large pig! The bear/wolf/bison part you drive through and then the rest is as a small petting zoo. They have a few rides there too but they weren't open yet for the season. I think Caleb had a fun time! He was a little bored by the end, but that's Caleb. He needs fast-paced excitement!

Gabe just ended school on May 23rd. I swear they had a party everyday for the whole last two weeks of school though. I also went on his last fieldtrip about two weeks ago, which was to the Tautphus Park Zoo. I only ended up having to watch Gabe and one other kid, his best friend, Carter, so it was pretty easy.I think their favorite animal was the Tiger, probably because they got to witness it eating a little girl's shoe, which had fallen off her foot and down into the tiger's pit. Guess she'll learn not to dangle her feet in a tiger's cage anymore! haha. I wonder what her parents said when she asked where her other shoe went and she responded, "A tiger ate it." haha funny stuff.

So then Gabe also had a little party each day. One day it was "Math Mania", then "Camping Day", then "Pajama/slumber party" day. They sure know how to party over there! I think he really enjoyed school the last two weeks! :) Who wouldn't?

So now it is Summer Vacation time and on  the first day of it Josh was trying to sleep from having worked a night shift the previous night and the boys were ready to kill each other by 9 am. It was great. How I will survive, I am not sure yet. I do have one sweet little girl though!!!

Avery is officially 10 months old now! She is getting to be a little more, "Look at me, Mom! Attention, please!!" But that's to be expected I guess. She gets a little bored if I try to put her in her walker for too long. Although she HAS finally figured out how to really get around in that thing. She used to only go backward with both feet at the same time in a little, push push, motion. Now she is actually getting the walking, alternating legs, forward pattern down. She is so fast and crazy that you have to watch your toes when she is near you in the kitchen! Josh puts her in it in the garage when he is working out and she zips around all over. I wish I had some official height and weight on her but she hasn't been to the doctor so I don't know! She is definitely thinning out though. She is in size 18 months, but when I put on a pair of 18-24 m jeans the other day which were the right length, they were way too big on the waist. I am thinking she will be a tall, skinny girl. Where does she get that??? :)  She also has the best baby hair of all the babies I have ever seen. There are lots of babies that are older than her that are still practically bald, and hers is now long enough for a little Pebbles Flintstone ponytail. She's is seriously such a cutie. She still just has those two bottom teeth and she is starting to get so proud of them it seems like she tries to stick them out when she smiles sometimes! Gabe used to do that too. What a cheeseball.

So, that is all I can think of for now! Oh and I am thinking of starting an online store on a website called Etsy. So any extra time I have lately is spent designing artwork for nurseries and weddings to put online in my store! We'll see how that goes. It's a fun hobby if nothing else. Keeps me somewhat sane in a world of baby and kid stuff!!

Avery's movie star look alike

So after a recent outing where someone told me that Avery looked like Dora the Explorer, it caused me to reflect on who I think she looks like. I decided that because of her little dark pixie-cut hairdo she most resembles Ginnifer Goodwin right now. I am ok with that. Especially considering THIS is what a computer program (which took Josh and my pictures and combined them) said that our baby girl would look like:

Wisconsin Visitors, Josh's 33rd birthday, and Avery is 9 months!

It's been a busy past week! Last Friday my mom, grandma, sister, and niece all flew out here from Wisconsin for a little visit. After many, MANY delays and changes of plans, they finally arrived at our house Friday afternoon, only about a day after their original arrival time! Bad weather in Wisconsin and some mechanical plane problems were to blame. Luckily there was no snow out here, just some major wind! But that's Rexburg. We had fun going to Flips Gymnastics Center for open gym, going to get cupcakes, going out to eat, and feeding the fish in Ashton at Big Springs. We had wanted to go through Yellowstone but I guess they don't open until the end of April! Maybe next time I guess! They left early Tuesday morning. It was good to see all of them!

Then on Thursday, two days after they went home, Josh had his 33rd birthday! I made him a raspberry cake with white frosting (he doesn't like chocolate! what!?!) and we also attended Gabe's school play about "Pete the Cat" earlier that night. I don't know if Gabe was just nervous or if he is just getting to that age where he is a little too cool to sing and dance in public, but he did not seem to thrilled up there! He somewhat sang the songs and did the hand gestures to the littlest degree, but he was definitely not as enthusiastic about it as some of the little girls! I looked at Josh and said, "I feel like I am watching how you would've been in your 1st grade play." I have a feeling that watching Caleb may be more like watching me. He's a little less shy. :)

Then there's the sweet little baby girl. She is sooooo cute! I love this age! She is always smiling and laughing and learning to wave. The easiest way to get her to wave is to put her in front of a mirror. She won't always wave at other people but she will always smile and wave at herself! haha she knows she's cute! Today I was throwing her up in the air and she was just laughing and laughing. She also likes to be hung upside down for some reason! She's pretty easy still. Here are some stats:

At her doctor's appt yesterday...
Weight: 22 lbs, 1 oz (still 90 %)
Height: 30 in (over 97%)
Teeth: two on the bottom, he says the top ones will be any time!

Sleeping: Usually to bed about 8:15, sleeps the whole night until about 8 am. Sometimes wakes up once at some point and has a bottle, goes back to sleep once she's done with it and we lay her back in her bed.

Skills: claps, waves, hates being on her stomach so rolls onto her back when we put her on her tummy! Not really crawling yet. She sits up and plays with toys easily but is content to stay in one place I guess! No complaints here! :) She loves her little jumper and always bounces when we hold her in a standing position. She loves to grab at anything around her that looks interesting and has even gotten her bowls of baby food a couple times when we looked away, making a big mess!

Here are some pictures!

Easter!

I forgot to post about Easter! This year we had a couple of weeks that it was sunny and high 50's and even into the 60's for a couple of days and it happened to fall right around Easter! It was really nice for our neighborhood Easter egg hunt! About 6 families all contributed 20 eggs per child and then we set them up at the school across the street and told each kid to find 20 eggs. It's always more fun for them than the city wide hunt that lasts 30 seconds and results in each child getting 2 eggs!

On Easter Sunday we went to church and on Saturday afternoon we went to Josh's parents and they had an Easter egg hunt too for all the grandkids (there are 20 now!!!). The Easter bunny of course came on Easter morning before church and even left a little treasure/egg hunt with clues and jelly beans at each stop around the house. He went all out and did this last year and the boys loved it so I think it has officially become locked in as the only accepted way for the Easter Bunny to leave the baskets at our house now! (crap.) haha.

Here are some pictures of Easter!

Gabe's 7th Birthday and Avery is 8 Months!

I really need to blog more but I am trying to keep it up at least once a month!

On March 18th, Avery officially turned 8 months old. I have always said that about 8 months to 12 months is my favorite age. Then they start walking and get to be a lot of work physically because they are constantly moving! So she is just getting into my favorite age! I like this age because they are smiley and can sit on the floor and play, but yet they are still young enough to wrap in a blanket and rock to sleep and young enough not to be getting into everything. Avery is quite the sweetie pie right now. She recently learned how to stick out her tongue and it is her favorite way to smile now. Here are some other facts about Avery:

Weight: about 21 pounds (didn't take her to the doctor for a while so that's an estimate using our scale)

Height: about 28-29 inches

Hair: Dark brown and long enough for a ponytail on top!

Teeth: She is getting one on the bottom! I didn't even expect it because the boys didn't get any until they were 1! Then the other day (after her waking up during the night a couple times) I was like, "She has a tooth! Omigosh!" She wasn't even that crabby!

Sleeping habits: Goes to bed around 8:30, if she wakes up before about 3 am I just give her a pacificer and she goes back to sleep. If it's about 4 am or later I will give her a bottle and then she usually sleeps until about 7:30 - 8:30 am. Some mornings she takes a catnap about 10 am and other days she just goes down for a nap at about 12:30 and sleep for a few hours. Otherwise if she does take a nap in the morning it usually is 2:00 - 5:00 that she sleeps for a nap.

Personality: She is usually a pretty easy baby. She isn't afraid of being held by new people yet.

Tricks: She just barely learned to sit up on the floor without falling over. We kind of had to force her to learn because she outgrew her baby carseat and the new size she's in has to stay in the car. So when I go into the store she has to sit up now in the front of the cart! It's sad though because I liked being able to carry her in and out of the car in her carseat for those times she fell asleep. My babies never last long in those baby seats! They always meet the size limit before the age limit!

Clothes: She is in 12m right now but getting close to 18! I had a ton of summery clothes that are 12m but unfortunately it is still cold out! So we are doing a lot of layering. It needs to get warm out!

Now onto the birthday boy!!

Gabe has been getting really into legos since last Summer. He moved into his own bedroom a couple months ago and has been asking for it to be a Lego room for a while. So on the night before his birthday, I had him and Caleb stay at grandma and grandpa Rhodes' house while I totally redid his room. I painted one wall to look like a whole wall made ot of Legos, which took FOREVER and a lot of painters tape. Josh also made him a lamp that looks like a giant lego and we got him a lego clock and some other fun stuff. When he got home after his party he was pretty surprised! We also had a new bike for him in there.

So his actual birthday party was at the Vivint Office downtown. It's a big open space with air hockey, foosball, a big kitchen area, etc. Our friends still work for Vivint (the Summer sales company that Josh used to work for) so they let us use it. It went really well. He had invited every boy in his class, which was only 7 boys (its mostly girls) and then also a couple of boys from our neighborhood so there were about 8 boys that came total, including Gabe and Caleb. We had a Lego City themed party where we played Pin the Nose on the Lego face (we made this face out of legos and put it on the wall), had a pinata shaped like a firetruck, and had a Lego creation contest where they got to build for a little while. Then we also had pizza and cake. Josh has a coworker whose wife makes these amazing cakes and she made Gabe's birthday cake. He had requested a "Lego firetruck" cake and she did an amazing job! I didn't even want to cut into it! 

It's hard to believe our little 3 pound baby was born 7 years ago and now he's a big kid! He works so hard in first grade, especially on reading, and he's gotten a lot better since the school year started. He loves reminding Caleb that he is older and likes to be the one to tell Caleb how to play and what they should do. Caleb is usually pretty good at listening to him but every now and then he decides to beat on him. Since Caleb is now the same weight at Gabe (60 pounds) its getting to be a pretty even fight.
Gabe still loves to snuggle though when Josh is gone to work and we often watch movies in my bed at night until he falls asleep. He's growing up so fast but he's still a little boy in some ways! :)

Avery's (delayed) 7 month post! And some other stuff...

This is a very late seven month post, seeing as how she was seven months on February 18th. Oops. Unfortunately, she spent a good portion of the month of February sick. She started off with what we though was just a cold and cough because Caleb had the same cough first, but then one night when she had a fever of 103.5 and was seeming really out of it, we decided to take her to Community Care. They told us she had RSV and sent us home with a nebulizer to do breathing treatments every four hours and some other medicine. First they gave us an antibiotic, but then when we took her to our regular doctor two days later, he said the antibiotic wasn't really needed (and it was making her sick) so he gave us a different steroid medicine to try and clear up her cobweby sounding lungs. After about a week she seemed a lot better and within about two weeks she seemed pretty much over it. We are just glad to have out smiley girl back!

Gabe and Caleb are both enjoying school and they had this special Dr. Seuss week this last week of February. There was one day that Gabe dressed up like Thing 1 from Cat in the Hat. They did a lot of fun activities every day and finished out the week by eating green eggs and ham.

Also, I have a funny Gabe story. So Gabe was asking me about what my favorite birthday I ever had was and I was telling him about my 11th birthday when my mom surprised me a with a limo. Then I was telling him what the inside of a limo looks like and that they have a window that rolls up so you can either see the driver or not. Gabe asked, "Why would you want the driver not to be able to see you?" and I said, "Maybe you just want privacy." And he goes, "Maybe if you need to change you clothes or something?" and I say, "Or if you are on a date with a girl and you want to kiss her and you don't want the driver to see." And he says to me in a serious voice, "That's a little inappropriate to be talking to a kid about." It just made me laugh out loud. I think it was because the voice he said it in still sounds so little, like, "That's a little inap-wo-pw-iate to be talking to a kid about," but yet he was lecturing me. haha.

Otherwise, we have just been busy getting out house organized. We got some new living room furniture with our tax return and finally sold our craigslist couches! (For $50 more than we paid for them 5 years ago! haha! My dad would be proud.) I have been stressing about every little decision, which is of course driving Josh crazy. I also have been still couponing, which Josh likes because it saves a lot of money! I really like it too. It's fun finding good deals.

That's about all for now!

Here's some pictures!