Quote of the Day

Josh has this thing with driving by one or the other of two bars in town on our way home from his mom's at night. I guess he likes to see what his options for possible DUI's are or something, who knows. Josh said the other night on the way home they drove by one of the bars and Ty says to him...."I don't like AT&T" Josh asks him why and he says "Because they try to put more bars in more places" HA HA. I thought that was so funny. Maybe we should sell it to them for an ad then I'll be rich :)

Our Merry Christmas

We hope you all had a Merry Christmas!! We had a busy past few weeks around our house. The boys finished up school last week with parties. I got to go to Jesse's class and help him decorate his gingerbread house. It was so fun to be with him in his class he was so cute decorating his house up. Here is a picture of him being silly and showing it off:

Christmas Eve we had a delicious dinner at Grandma and Grandpa Neilson's house. We ate more than would fit into our stomachs and had fun visiting and playing with cousins. Jerry tried to talk us all into letting the kids open their presents but we withstood temptation. (Well I did, no one else in my family was very happy about that including Josh!) Thanks to Grandma for having dinner at her house every Christmas Eve!

The boys opened their Christmas jammies. They aren't nearly excited about it as they used to be. They said they wanted to open a present that they didn't know what it was....I told them too bad. I'm the scrooge I tell ya. Tracen was exhausted at this point and so happy to go to bed as soon as the picture was over.

Our tree after Santa paid us a visit.

My boys take after me in that they like to sleep in. I was totally counting on this. Even on Christmas they usually don't get up too early. Not this year...everyone, including Tracen was up at 6:30 a.m. ugh! They even stayed up late, I couldn't get them to go to sleep the night before. We made them wait while Tracen had a bottle. Then we went up to see what Santa left us.

Tracen really suprised me. I thought he wouldn't really care about his presents but he ripped some wrapping paper off and he smiled at all of his presents and pushed buttons and giggled. He really enjoyed all of his new toys.

The boys still adore Tracen and love to help him play with his new toys. They are so cute with him.
Merry Christmas!

7 months

Tyler informed me the other day that Tracen was seven months old. What? When did that happen. And if you ever need to know the date of anything, birthdays, random happenings etc, Ty's your man. So it's now 3 days later I guess and 5 a.m. in the morning and I decided I'm going to post what he's up to these days. I hope it all makes sense, I'm at work and woke up yesterday (Still today for me but for those of you that sleep at night, yesterday) at 9 a.m. Is that 20 hours? Can I tell you I'm excited to go to bed in 2.5 hours? OK, so I'll try to stay on subject and make sense all at the same time

Tracen at 7 Months

• He is still a happy boy. He always has a huge smile for us and a laugh or a squeal.
• Now to contradict myself, he's got this scream/cry that he uses when you aren't paying attention to him as much as he'd like and he wants to let you know he's not happy with you.
• The little stinker is going to crawl. He gets up on his hands and knees, or his hands and tippy toes (which is so cute!) and rocks back and forth.
• Although he can't crawl he gets around. He rolls, moves backwards and although I haven't seen it with my own two eyes, I believe he must have a little army crawl for going forward. He doesn't use this when I'm looking but if I look away a few minutes later he's across the room and I have no idea how he got there.
• He likes to talk to us and even started making what sounds like a "da da" sound.
• When the boys get in the car after school his whole face lights up and he gets excited. Same with when his dad comes home.
• He's Grandpa Neilson's little buddy. They like to hang out together.
• He loves food. He eats lots of rice cereal, squash and carrots. He'll also eat peaches and pears but he makes a funny face like it's sour.
• He's sprouted 2 teeth in the past week and a half, now when he chews on my finger it hurts.
• He's still big and chubby with beautiful eyes.

We absolutely love Tracen!

This post is totally subject to editing after a bit of sleep today (tomorrow for me) Time is all relative :) So if it makes no sense, check back later and I'll write in English.

Elf Yourself

Ty has been begging me to help him do this for days. When we got all done we found out we could post it on our blog. :) Don't mind the cereal on Tracen's face....I didn't know we'd be posting it when we started!

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

A little family trip

Josh had a marijuana testing training in Provo last week. So on a whim we decide to take the boys out of school for a day and we'll take a little family trip. Josh had been planning on driving up Tuesday morning and not staying the night. We decided we'd drive up on Monday after he got done working the basketball game. We check the weather, there's nothing on the radar, I climb online and book us a hotel room for the night. I'm not even kidding it started snowing like 5 minutes later. I check the weather again and it looks pretty good just past Cedar.

Josh gets home and we load up his Blazer in the inch of snow and head off. It snowed until Fillmore! Like hard, I can't see where I'm going snow....don't trust the radar. We got to Provo at 2 a.m. where we proceeded to our motel (I wouldn't suggest staying there). The office was closed, which I knew it would be but I'd told them it would be 1 or 2 when we got there. So we rang the doorbell.....nothing. Rang it again....nothing. We went down to the road and checked into the La Quinta, which was much nicer than our original destination.

Josh went off to his training after about 4 hours of sleep and got back really fast (yay!). We had a fun day traipsing all over the place. Of course, our first stop was Cabellas. Always have to stop there. Josh spent his time in the gun section while the boys and I enjoyed the stuffed wildlife and the fish tanks. Tracen LOVED the fish. He jumped up and down on my lap and reached for the fish the entire time we were in there. Then we went to the Rodizio Grill for lunch...that was pretty dang close to heaven. There were lots of yummy different meats to try and as much as you wanted. The boys thought that was pretty cool, especially Jesse. We wandered around Trolley square for awhile and bought a bunch of homemade salt water taffy that was SO good.

Then we headed over to Temple Square. We took a little tour of the conference center. We'd never been inside. It was absolutely amazing. Tyler loved the pipe organ. We really enjoyed all the paintings and sculptures. The room they hold conference in is amazing and huge. Then we went over to temple square and walked through the visitors centers and the tabernacle. Tyler again LOVED the pipe organ. We waited around until they turned on the lights so that the boys could see them. They thought that was pretty cool. I remember going there when I was little. It seemed like temple square was like 4 times bigger then. It didn't take nearly as long to walk from one end to the other as it did back then.

We loaded up in the car, got some dinner and headed home, thankfully with no snow. The boys were tired! They slept the whole way home. It was a fun little trip, minus the snow that kept us on the edge of our seats on the way up. I'm glad the boys got to come and we had fun!

Isn't he cute?

The temple looked so pretty all lit up!

Ty wanted his picture with the organ. The missionaries are all eager to take pics for you :)

Passed out on the way home.

Piano Recital

The boys had their first piano recital on Sunday. They both did great! I know how nervous you can get at a recital so I'm proud of both of them. They have a great piano teacher and we absolutely love her!

Quote of the Day

Josh was patting his belly and told Jesse "there's a baby in here." (because it's kinda roundish)
Jesse looks at him with disgust and replies...."Dad only girls lay eggs"

HA HA

Christmas outakes

You would think that if you took 150 photos of your 3 children that at least a few would be worthy of your annual Christmas card...right? Ha! We told Ty and Jesse it was their job to look at the camera and smile. Let's see, there was this smile by Jesse...

Oh, and this smile by Jesse...

Then we had to take a break to sniff our noses...

Then we took some time to stick out some tongues...
Who knows what Jesse was doing here...

This one's so you know that Ty made funny faces too... So it came down to this one....it's mostly cute

Or this one....a little silly and Tracen doesn't have his really cute smile on, but since I'm not so good at head swapping in Photoshop, what do you do?

In the end I went with this last one. I thought it was a little silly but cute.

Computers hate me

Me and computers and Christmas time just don't mix. Two days ago my computer was working and yesterday it wasn't. Hate that. This is the second computer I've had die during the holidays. The last one was only 2 years ago too. So luckily my dad bought a 3 year warranty on the computer when he got it before I inherited it. So it's off to never never land to be fixed, hopefully, although I have to say I have never been impressed with Best Buys ability to fix anything, so we'll see.

And just for my future reference, Tracen went to his 6 month appointment on Monday he is officially 22 lbs 8 ounces, 29 inches long and his head is 18" around. This keeps him above the 100% on height and weight. His ear infection appears to be gone now. He absolutely LOVED the paper on the bed at the dr's office and pretty much had it shredded in the amount of time it took the dr to leave the room and the nurse to bring in the shots. For Christmas we're just going to buy him a roll of that.

Belated Veteran's Day

Tyler's class went to the Vietnam War memorial on Veteran's day. His teacher, Mrs. Milianta, took a picture of him next to the his grandpa (Vaughn's) block. Ty is such a thoughtful kid. Ever since then he's wanted to go back and get all the kids picture taken there so he could give it to his Grandpa for a belated Veteran's day gift. We finally made it over there the other night. It's a really neat memorial. We took the boys pictures and they did some rubbings. Then Ty made a card and everything for Grandpa.

Tracen by grandpa's name

The cutest 6 month old you ever met

I can't believe my baby is 6 months old!! Where does the time go? He's so much fun to have around.

6 month stats:

1. 21 pounds something ounce (yes I know he's huge!! I had to go to the chiropractor from carrying him)

2. He sits up like a champ

3. He rolls only when he feels like it

4. He absolutely LOVES paper and plastic. Hamburger wrappers happen to be his favorite. He'll smash them, wave them around and chew on them while the rest of us eat our burgers.

5. Poor kid got his first ear infection and the antibiotics took a toll on his digestive system so at 6 months we're dealing with his first diaper rash and it's a doozy.

6. He smiles and giggles and laughs, it's very cute.

7. He gives the best most juiciest kisses ever

8. He sports a very cute faux hawk.

I don't know what the deal is but when I put him in his chair to feed him he likes to hang his head off the right side it. I sit him up over and over, and he's good at sitting up so I don't know what the deal is. But he loves to hang upside down which makes it hard to feed him. Here he was enjoying squash for the first time. He loved it.

Our normal life

There's nothing too exciting to report around here but I wanted to post some pictures anyway so I'd better think of something to say. Tracen, who used to sleep through the night, doesn't lately. This is hard on his mother who loves to sleep. He got sick a week ago, he's had this runny nose, congestion, cough, throwing up thing going on. I should note however, he only throws up on me...no one else. I had one of the ER docs check his ears just to be sure last week and no infection....yet....he'd kept running a low grade fever all weekend so Sunday I decided I'd take him to the dr the next day. Then Josh texted me at work and told me that there was "stuff" draining from Tracen's ear...oh joy. So he brought him in and had him looked at again (there's got to be some perks for working there right?) sure enough he'd ruptured his ear drum. So now he's on a good old pink antibiotic. He did smile and giggle yesterday that's a first in a week. AND I learned he's old enough to have benedryl. I'm hoping that it helps his congestion AND his sleep. I threw in the picture of me and Tracen because I'm never in pictures, not because it's a great photo of me...because it's not :)
Tracen learns new things everyday. This is a great one, he can stick out his tongue. He'll be ready to use it on the playground someday I'm sure. He also has figured out how to sort of move in the general direction that he desires in his walker. His favorite destination....the garbage can. He loves plastic so he plays with the garbage bag and tries to stick it in his mouth until he gets caught by his mom who thinks it's disgusting!

This is from a while back. It makes me laugh. This is Jerry and Jesse playing Twister together on Ty's birthday. These two are good buddies for sure.

Tyler absolutely LOVES to play the piano. In fact, I have to kick him off of it occasionally. It's like a magnet though. I tell him "Ty no playing the piano until your room is clean (homeworks done, etc)" but if he even walks within 5 feet of the living room it's like a huge magnet and he just can't resist the temptation. He's been in piano lessons for about 2 1/2 months and he's through his first set of books and well into the second. He also has a great ear because he can play the tune to several primary songs. He's just sat there long enough and played with it until he's figured them out.

So this picture's sideways, sorry. Jesse is doing well in piano as well. He doesn't have the magnet problem that Ty has however. I'm thinking he'll be the one I have to pull out the "girls think boys who play the piano are cute" card on. I'm hoping by that point it means something to him....wait no maybe I don't. Anyway, right now girls aren't a good excuse to keep playing.

The boys have their first piano recital December 14th. Ty's super excited about that of course. I've got to round up my video camera by then for sure. It's around here somewhere.

Funny kid

"If I were a turkey, at Thanksgiving I would run away"

This is why we love Jesse so much. He's hilarious. It's also the reason he's the subject matter in a good majority of the quote of the days. When we went to vote the first graders had papers up in the gym Jesse's said What does the president do all day? His answer was "he protects us," and "Why should adults vote" to which he commented "so the new president can say new things"

More time...kazookeylele

This totally made my day and made me LOL!!

Time on your hands

So what do you do when you have a sick baby who won't let you put him down? You find lots of interesting....and not interesting things on the internet. But no worries there are lots of things out there to occupy your time when you find you have too much of it. This is hilarious it's from www.yearbookyourself.com Don't you think Josh looks so hot?? :) His worked out better than mine.

I can't wait until Tracen is feeling better and I can go back to normal life! Besides that it's so hard to see my sweet smiley little boy miserable.

Tyler's Baptism

Ty was baptized tonight by his dad. They both did a wonderful job. Tyler has been so excited to get baptized. He's been telling me all week that he is more excited to be baptized this week than to have Halloween. I'm so glad that he wanted be baptized. He had several friends get baptized tonight as well, Rachel, Trendee, Karsen and Dane were all baptized tonight too. We're so grateful for all the family and friends who came to be with Ty tonight...Thank you!! Some of you came from a long ways away and we're so glad you did!

What I eat

Tracen's decided if I'm not going to feed him solid food he'll just have to find his own. I mean the kid's starving to death, can't you tell (I do feed him cereal, but I don't count that in the "solid" dept). So this is what he had for breakfast:
Now he's really starting to chow down:

And then for dinner...they were a little harder to get to for dinner, but he just folded himself in half and started knawing away at his pj's

Trick or Treat

You gotta love the expression on his face!

We took a shotgun approach to Halloween this year. Jesse continued his ninja stent from last year, Ty was a baby and it was quite the deal and Tracen was the only one with a new original costume...he was a $3 skeleton from walmart (but he was a dang cute one). Thursday we finally got our pumpkins carved/drawn on. Yes we are on top of things! We went down to the Hallelujah Night Festival put on by the Calvary chapel. It was lots of fun. Then the boys went with Jesse's friend Billy to trunk or treat at one of the churches. Then we ran out to Grandma's house and then I was beat so we went to bed. Josh, lucky guy, got to work the Howl (college dance) until 3 a.m. wohoo.

carving pumpkins:

Scary bunch!

You have to blow this one up and check the drool hanging off his chin...it's priceless.