Christmas

For his Papa

I copied my sister in law and made this video of Jonas. I'm sorry Mel it was just too good. We had so much fun watching yours and I wanted to have something to put a smile of James' face tomorrow.

My babies are growing up. Sniffle Sniffle. We recently celebrated their birthdays which are only a few days apart. When they get older it is a reminder to me of truly how brief our time with them is. On a day to day basis it doesn't feel like that, especially when I'm trying to get us all ready to go somewhere which takes anywhere from 1-5 hours and one of them is pitching a fit and the other is crying every time I set them down. That was the case earlier today. But we eventually made it out the door and after running some errands we made our way to the park.I like how M Russell Ballard said speaking of motherhood that there will be hard times and frustrating times but the joy comes in moments. Today at the park I enjoyed the warm weather (the sun was shining and it had warmed up enough that we didn't even need our jackets), I enjoyed my son pretending to pick me up in an ambulance, save my life,and show me his new climbing tricks, and my daughter grinning away as she tried new things, climbing all over the playground equipment and sitting in the swing.

We also recently got to go home to see the Powells and Atkinsons for Thanksgiving. Thanks everyone for being great company, lending us your cars, letting us borrow your wii and coats etc., babysitting, and most of all for delicious food. We love you!

Halloween

James was gone for most of the month of October. Besides missing him a whole lot I will also admit.... Sometimes things got a little out of hand.




Also, there are some things I've learned about my daughter. She is going to break me of my habit of leaving half full cups of water around the house, because she ALWAYS finds them and loves to dump them out. And she is a picky eater just like I was but loves to eat two of my favorite snack foods- popcorn and granola.


We were all very overjoyed to have James back. We were very literally counting the days and it has made us appreciate just being able to be together so much more. It was fun to enjoy Halloween together. I wasn't too good about pictures this year. Jonas was a transformer. In fact he informs us all the time that he is still bumblebee. Savannah was a really cute girl in a halloween t-shirt. James and I got into the spirit of things by carving pumpkins from Homestarrunner character patterns. We also got into the spirit of things through eating our not so great tootsie roll candy leftovers. It made us want to get better candy next year.

Island in the sun

Can we say SPOILED? I got to go to Hawaii with James and only James. My mom was willing to come all the way to my home and watch my kids for a week while I went on a vacation with my husband. It has always been a dream of mine and James' to go to Hawaii. I thought maybe some day far far in the future but I never would have guessed we would have this chance so soon. James was the reason we got to go. He went through A LOT to get us there where the ADA convention was held this year. We arrived a few days before it started so we could be tourists. Of course it was oh so fun. We got to sleep until we awoke naturally for the first time in a looong time, and go for walks on the beach. We went on a tour of the Dole plantation and ate the most flavorful ice cream made with pineapple juice. We went to the Polynesian Cultural Center to learn about the ploynesian islands. We did learn a lot and we also got to see lots of dancing and hear music, eat at a Luau and see a very impressive evening show complete with fire dancing. I can't even begin to describe to you the awsomeness of the PCC and all of the cool things we saw there so I'll just move on. We visited the Hawaii temple grounds, went on an evening dinner cruise with a bunch of mostly asian tourists, found an extremely beautiful and mostly deserted beach to swim in. The day we had plans to go swimming and on a dinner cruise, we got into the car that morning and turned on the radio and heard that there was a tsunami warning in effect for the Hawaiian islands because of the earthquake near Samoa. Luckily later that day we learned that the tsunami warning had been canceled. Whew!! I kept imagining being on the cruise boat and seeing a giant massive wave heading right towards us.
We also got to shopping at this huge international marketplace for gifts to bring home, and visited a fruit stand where James had them cut open a fresh coconut for us to eat (not as good as I always imagined but I'm glad I had the experience). After the first day of the conference we drove to a place called Hanuma Bay which is a great place to snorkel. We got there too late to snorkel so we just swam but we came back very early the next morning with all our snorkel gear. We were so glad we had made the effort to come back because we saw lots of fish and some big ol sea turtles under the water. Actually one of them was swimming literally right next to me which kind of freaked me out. As I'm writing about this trip I am looking at my skin flaking off from the sunburn I got on the trip. That's okay it was soo worth it. Thank you Mom!

Stuff

I didn't want to keep on seeing those spiders on by blog so it forced me into posting again. Sorry for those of you who did look at the blog only to be grossed out by the close ups.







We went to the beach..... again. Gotta live it up while we're so close. I LOVE the beach at Hilton Head in South Carolina. Definitely my favorite beach by far. The sand is so nice, blue skies, and the waves were perfect.




she's learning to walk... but still prefers to be held by mommy
pretty in pink pjs



At the nature center.
Jonas trying to look like the karate kid under his papa's direction having never seen the movie himself.


happy baby :) she looked so cute in her little shoes-too bad she would'nt leave them on.

creepy visitors

I just had to post some pictures of these scary looking spiders that live on the side of our house. I've posted three pictures of two different spiders. Jonas has named them Biggy pops one and biggy pops two. Do you know how unsettling it is to look out your window and see one of these guys hanging around?

July stuff

A little while ago we got to take a day trip to a beach named Amelia Island in Florida. With 2 kids, we made a lot of effort to get there early so we could spend time on the beach and go on a boat ride. We got to the beach swam and had fun then got kicked off the beach because of an impending storm. The lifeguards said everyone had 5 minutes to take cover. They were really quite concerned for our safety. So we dried off and went to a restaurant for lunch. We had to take a screaming child out of the restaurant before our food arrived so we ate in the car on our way to the boat dock. Before we got there the storm finally hit. We only had to walk a few steps from the car to a covered porch to wait out the storm but it was the kind of storm where in one half of a second you are absolutely drenched.So we were all feeling very soggy, but the weather cleared up quickly and we got on the boat for a fun ride. Jonas was allowed to drive the boat which is a dream come true for him. He told me later "I couldn't handle the boat". Maybe that's because he could barely reach the steering wheel.



Sprite. good for babies right?









Also we celebrated James' birthday early last month since we knew he would be not be here for it :( not to mention some other important events :(:( for some training. More dentistry with a gun for him. We are missing him. alot.

Jonas trying out James' new space pen. James wanted another one to add to his collection. He needed to have pens that would write upside down,underwater and in extremely extreme temperatures. Why? Because none of his other pens could do that kind of stuff.


These next pictures are for our once upon a time neighbor Maren who was a big Napoleon dynamite/Nacho Libre fan. Maren we thought you might appreciate our efforts at making Nacho Libre corn. Jonas was saying "Nachoooooooooooh!".

4th of July

Okay I know I look like a huge dork in that helmet but I had to post this picture because this is a very very rare occasion. James and I went on a date... with no kids... just us. We traveled on the back roads of Hinesville via motor scooter to go see Transformers. It was awesome!


For the 4th of July we traveled to Flaglar Beach Florida to be with James' aunt and uncle and their 9 kids with spouses and their 18 grandchildren. They had rented a beach house and invited us to join them so we went for a couple of days.






Jonas discovered some baby kittens in our backyard one morning. He scared the mother cat off and then had hours of fun watching and petting the kittens. He kept trying to feed them small sticks. Then the mother came back and moved each kitten one by one to a new and more safe location.



Here are some pictures of some of Savannah's new skills (sitting up and crawling). I call her my crazy baby cause I just can't keep a hold of that girl anymore. When she's really sleepy she'll lay on my shoulder and go to sleep otherwise she is on the move.










For Tyler