She's almost there!

Jacquelyn is so close to crawling! She gets up on all fours, rocks by and forth, and then either plops or goes backwards.  It's her current mode of transportation.  Although she usually ends up underneath something.  She still has no desire to roll!  Rolling from back to tummy yes, but tummy to back nope. It's fun to watch cause she gets so excited.  I don't know if I'm ready for her to be mobile yet. Although I'm sure she's ready to chase her brother!

I got this picture of Todd and Jacquelyn after she was done playing.  She was enjoying some Dad lovin all to herself!

Rockin Around the Christmas Tree!

We put up our Christmas tree yesterday!  It really put us in the holiday mood.  Well, me at least.  We turned on our Christmas music and got to town.

Everett was so excited when we got everything out.  He would go and help get each section for Todd. When they were flattening out the branches he'd help and then start clapping.

Once the tree was up we started decorating.  This was probably Everett's favorite part.  He had so much fun getting the ornaments and then helping put them on the tree.  Todd would lift him up so he could get some up high.  Now he'll take some from the bottom and keep saying "up".

 

Jacquelyn enjoyed all the festivities too! She got to hang out and play and dance along to the christmas music. Every once in awhile she would be able to get a hold of an ornament!

And how could we not take pictures after setting up the tree? I LOVE these. They both look so excited huh?! I just wish I had realized my setting was off so they were a little clearer! Oh well, at least they turned out.

Happy Thanksgiving!!

We had a pretty good Thanksgiving.  It was just the 4 of us and we were looking forward to it.  This year is the first year that we are having holidays with just our little family.  SInce we've been married we've always been with family, or they've come here. Which we love, but we we're excited to start our own little traditions and pass on ones we've grown up with.

We started out our day with having some donuts.  I tried to do some baked ones and sadly they didn't turn out too hot.  They weren't bad, but not a make over. Everett loved them though!  He got so excited when I asked if he wanted a donut.  WE got a picture of him after eating and unfortunately that is our only picture from Thanksgiving :)

The rest of the day was spent with Todd smoking our delicious turkey, watching football, and cooking/baking in the kitchen.  We had dinner and then took showers.  I couldn't believe it was 5 and we were all still in our pajamas.  The sad part is that the only reason we got out of them is so we could go to our friend's house for games and dessert.  Besides all the cooking it was nice to just hang out and spend time as a family.

We have so much to be thankful for.  I don't think we ever truly realize everything that we have and usually take for granted.  I'm grateful for my little family and the joy they bring to me.  I'm grateful I have two beautiful kids that call me mom and husband who takes care of us all, and is there for me even during my crazy moments.

This is what happens

When you have a mom who finds a tutorial online on how to cut little boys' hair with scissors.  She decides what a brilliant idea it is and believes it looks so easy she could do it.  UNtil she starts cutting and then it becomes too late.  The said boy goes from having beautiful long locks...

to a buzzed cut...

p

Please ignore the messy background!

Dad had to step in with the razors.  He still looks pretty cute though:)

There's a battle in our home....

....and I'm losing. Seriously losing.

I cannot get Jacquelyn to eat food for the life of me.  I've tried rice cereal and oatmeal. Hates it. I even added applesauce...nope.  I've tried, apples, bananas, squash, sweet potatoes.  Still nothing.  She gets so excited when she sees the spoon that she starts pumping her legs and everything.  The minute I stick the spoon in her mouth she makes this funny face and then starts pushing the food out with her tongue.  I thought that maybe she just didn't grasp the concept of swallowing.  So I held the spoon in there for her to kinda suck off of it.  Yeah bad idea.  Instead she just spits it out so it goes everywhere!  Oh man. What to do? I know she wants food.  Every time we eat she just stares and tries to grab it.  She LOVES the little Mum Mum rice crackers.  They get devoured when put on her tray!  Oh someday this girl will understand and hopefully I'll start conquering this little battle of ours.

Toilet Paper Turkey

For a little fun today Everett made a cute little turkey.  I'm horrible when it comes to teaching things so I tried to throw my "everything has to be perfect" mind out and just had fun with it.  It's sad I know. Even with a 2 year old I get frustrated when it doesn't turn out just right.  Although today was a lot of fun cause I just wanted him to enjoy the activity.  He got pretty excited. Especially when he got to help glue on the eyes.  He got to color on the toilet paper roll, trace his hands, and help glue.  Tracing his hands was not his favorite though! He kept trying to move them.

Once our little turkey was done Everett had quite a bit of fun with him.  First he would take his scrapes of paper and throw it through the body.

Then it became a sleeve while he was coloring.

And then a horn. He would yell "dododooooo".

And then it became a crayon holder.  He would first stuff the crayon through the nose....

and then he'd use it to draw.

That little turkey became quite useful!  Today's craft was quite the success.  Of course our little Jacquelyn wasn't left out.  She got to watch and chew on her new favorite snack, her Mum Mums. She LOVES them.  When we hand them to her she just starts kicking in excitment!

Cakes Cakes Cakes

I have never been a cake decorator.  I'm a baker through and through.  When I was in school I always got sooo nervous when decorating cakes. I don't know why, but I just did.  Once I finished school I knew I wanted nothing to do with that side of the business.  I could bake the cakes, but decorating...nope.

Since school I have tried dabbling in cake decorating, but would always just get so frustrated.  Last year I made my brother's wedding cake.  It was a cupcake wedding cake.  I loved it.

  It peeked my interest and I thought "you know what, I could do this".  I would do something here and there, but nothing too big.  When we moved to Rigby I met a friend who also went to culinary school and she now does cake decorating.  She has such a talent for it too! We always talked about how we should do something together cause she wants to improve her baking and I want to improve decorating.  So we could just help each other out. We finally put ourselves out there and started making cakes for some friends.  Our first was a hydrangea cake. I don't have a picture of it ,but it turned out so good. Our second was a birthday cake for a co-worker's daughter.  He wanted it to have the New England Patriots symbol on it.  So we put our heads together and came up with this:

It was the first time I worked with fondant in a long time.  Once again I got nervous, but it was so much fun working with Delight.  She made the fondant while I stacked and frosted the cake.  It brought back a lot of memories!  She had to keep encouraging me.  I still have lots that I need to practice on, but it was just nice to go and do that. Hopefully we'll be able to make some more soon!

Before we left Delight's daughter got a picture of us with the cake:

Oh Jacquelyn

This little girl is a mover.  She cannot sit still. Even when eating. She always has to be on the look out seeing what is going on.  We have a little bouncy chair that we usually put her in, but now she doesn't stay in it for long!  She is either making her self bounce like crazy by kicking her left leg, scooting out like so: 

or sitting up and rolling out head first:

She seriously does not sit still for long.  Tonight I caught her laying there and then she just rolled to the side and rolled out!  She is such a fun little girl. Everett LOVES when she is in this chair.  He will go over and just start bouncing her. I went to get on him the other day, but Jacquelyn was just laughing. How am I suppose to discipline him when his sister laughs and doesn't care?!

Trying to Be Crafty

Since the weather is getting to where we can't play much outside I have been trying to find things to do inside.  It's kinda hard with a 2 year old.  Everett hates being cooped up.  If you even say the word "go" he thinks it's time to go outside.  This might be a long winter, but hopefully we'll be able to make the most of it.

So to keep Everett entertained I have been trying to find some activities and crafts we can do.  We've made play dough.  I found this thing were you use a strainer and pipe cleaners and have them stick the pipe cleaners in the holes.  He loved it....The first day. Now it's just old to him!  We've made necklaces and bracelets.  I attempted to make a fort for him, but sadly I got frustrated and gave up.  With a whole bunch of fails, I turned to go ol' pinterest.  I found a lot of neat things to do for the holidays.  I thought it'd be fun and we could get in the spirit and hopefully Everett would start thinking I'm a more fun mom!

My first project.....painting. Everett LOVED it.  He was so excited.  We made a turkey out of his handprints and then he just got to play around for a bit.

His little turkey turned out better than I thought it would!  While I finished the body he made these:

I was trying to teach him how he needs to clean the paintbrush before he goes into another color.  That part was not his favorite! He just wanted to paint and paint!

Happy Halloween

Our Halloween weekend has come and gone again.  We had a pretty good weekend though!  It's been fun trying to decide what to dress the kids up as.  It'll be interesting to see what they start to choose when they get older.  But for now we get excited coming with ideas.  Last year Everett was Alfalfa and he was the cutest kid.  For a while that's the only way people at our church knew us.  This year we wanted to do something else fun so we came up with:

 Clark Kent! 

We thought we were pretty original, until we started googling it and then saw that other friends had the same idea.  Oh well, he looked pretty cute to us!  It was funny to see people's reaction.  Most got who he was, but then we got a few comments that were "he's a good little businessman", and "he's a cute nerd". Why thank you!  For our little Jacquelyn, Todd came up with the idea.  My dad calls her Little Red so we thought it'd be fun to go with Little Red Riding Hood.

She was so cute!  I was surprised how good she did. It was late and cold, but she was just a bubbly as usual.

Everett is starting to get the gist of tricking or treating.  We took him to a trunk or treat Saturday night and he was a little out of it.  When we got there he had been asleep, so he wasn't too excited when we woke him up. Although once he saw the first person put candy in his bag he pepped up a little!  We kept trying to get him to say "trick or treat", but he'd just stand there with his bag open.  

He of course loved going through all his goodies.  Now he's always asking for a treat.