Merry Christmas

Pictures of our Christmas for our families:

He was cool with Santa until it was time to sit on his lap….maybe next year!

Waiting on the steps before opening presents.  Yes, we know we need to work on his "cheese" face.

So excited!!!  He has named him "Speed".

Thank you Auntie Caitlan!!!

Spoiled with a stuffed stocking.  He called every present that came out of here "sock".

Love momma!

Love dadda!  So excited to play football.

Sorry bud, you get the coal by default, plus you were plenty "naughty" this year!

Hope everyone had a Merry Christmas!

Duct Taping the Bishop

Again, this is for those who asked for pictures.  We recently had a primary activity that the kids have been preparing for, for months.  We have been working on the articles of faith this year and as an incentive we told the kids for every article of faith that they memorized they would receive a piece of tape to help duct tape our Bishop to the wall at our activity.  The kids really impressed me with all they learned and had so much fun taping the Bishop up real well!

The kids putting on the finishing touches.

Our primary with the Bishop.

Ami and I with the Bishop.

Rick was the nice one who cut the Bishop out while we gave the kids their treat.  Our Bishop was a great sport and it turned out to be such a fun activity!

Happy Birthday Rick!

Rick turned 32 this year!  We had a fun little celebration at home.  Ethan helped pick out the sprinkles (after dumping the first bottle out in the middle of wal-mart) and loved blowing out the candles with daddy.  Rick's favorite gift came a few days later.  He received the new Call of Duty xbox game and has been playing quite a bit lately.

Ethan wanted to join in the fun.  Here he is with daddy's controller and headset.

Looks just like a miniature Rick!  Happy Birthday Sweetie!

Why Ethan now sleeps in a toddler bed...

Ethan is now sleeping in a toddler bed.  We weren't planning on making this transition any time soon…actually we were thinking next summer after we moved would be a great time.  He had other ideas.  One day I came into his room to get him up from a nap and found this:

Somehow he had filled his crib with books and wipes.  The books I could understand as I had left the box of books next to his crib and it was easy to see how he could pull them through the slats.  The wipes…I had NO clue how he had gotten a hold of them.  So being the wonderful mother that I am, I ran downstairs, grabbed the camera, ran back upstairs, then asked him to show me how he got the wipes.   He was so kind as to show me this: 

Apparently he would climb up on the rail then reach over to the wipe dispenser on the changing table.

Gotta love those wipes!  That was not all though.  You see it is hard to balance on the rail and grab the wipes so he decided he might as well go all the way over and just climb onto the changing table.

Apparently he really wanted those baby wipes.  Well all this climbing of furniture took a couple of years off of my life and after a few days of discovering him in places I was not okay with, we decided to move his furniture around, undoing the completely nice arrangement in his room, so that he couldn't climb from one piece to the next.  That did not stop my monkey.

He just pulled that bottom drawer out and climbed up that way.  See the wipes on the chair?  Do you know how many we went through during this week?  We ended up having to convert his crib to a toddler bed, take the chair, wipes, and the green basket of baby items on his changing table out of his room.  Now he has no reason to climb and after a dreadful week of transition, Ethan now sleeps in a toddler bed.

Halloween

This Halloween we had Ethan dress up like the little monkey that he is.  We took him trick-or-treating at the zoo during their ZooBoo.  We met up with some friends and had a lot of fun seeing the animals and picking up treats for the kids.

Ethan and his little friends.  Aren't they all adorable?

As part of our Halloween activities, we went to Kelsay Farms, a dairy farm not too far from where we live.  While it wasn't a true pumpkin patch, it was perfect for Ethan and they had tons for him to do.  There was a corn crib, a hay ride, cows to look at, a little train to ride, and hay to climb.  It was a fun family outing.

The miracle of this photo is Ethan has a fear of getting too close to ANY animal and he is the one who walked up to pet the calf.

We hope you all had a great Halloween!

Beautiful Nauvoo

This year for Memorial Day weekend we drove to Nauvoo to explore that beautiful city.  We had great weather and we even had wonderful friends (the Fortners) to spend time with!

Ethan and Rick are making rope in the Family Living Center.  Rick was trying really hard to remember his Boy Scout skills.  Might need to put him back in scouts for a refresher!

This was taken in the back of the Browning house with the temple in the background.  The flowers that were planted all around were gorgeous.

We earned our brick at the brickyard!

This ended up being one of my favorite places.  We went to the Old Nauvoo Cemetery and were the only ones there.  It was so gorgeous and peaceful that I kept telling Rick that is where I want to be buried.

Ethan had fun running through the tombstones.  It was sad at how many were very young children.

Ethan and I in front of the memorial in the cemetery.

Our little family in front of the Nauvoo temple.  I loved this temple.  So pretty!

Ethan is going through a "daddy" phase and just loves to mimic Rick.  This is the Joseph and Hyrum Smith Memorial across the street from the temple.

These two are just pictures of Ethan that I love near the memorial and temple grounds.  We let him run around to get out some of his energy and he loved it.  I love the look of joy on his face!

Ethan and Rick wearing matching rings from the blacksmith's shop.

This was special.  In the Seventies Hall they have binders listing those who had been in the Quorums of the Seventies and when I was flipping through I found my great-great-great grandpa!  I hadn't known he had been a Seventy so it was kind of fun!  (ignore the wild woman hair, it was windy that day!)

Not to be outdone, Rick found his ancestor in the binders as well!

We went down by the Mississippi River to see where the pioneers crossed and let Ethan throw rocks in.  I couldn't imagine having to cross  that river!

We took the tour of the Joseph Smith Historic Sites and I really enjoyed seeing where the prophet lived and worked.  Here is our family by the graves of Joseph, Hyrum, and Emma.

This is my beautiful friend Jenalee Fortner!  I was so glad they were able to be in Nauvoo with us!

On our way home we stopped in Carthage to tour the jail.  This is the window that Joseph was shot through.  While this was more somber, it was not sad since we know he was able to complete the work he needed to do here on earth!

We were able to see and do so much more but I decided this was already picture overload.  My favorites were a wagon ride through Historic Nauvoo, seeing the beautiful Nauvoo Temple, and the Old Nauvoo Cemetery.  Rick liked the wagon ride, the Temple and the Blacksmith shop.  We ended up staying at the Motel Nauvoo which was perfect for us.  The price was good, and it was nice to be in town so when our baby was melting down and needed a nap it was easy to go back to the room and put him down without having to travel far.  A big plus was that his pack-n-play fit inside the bathroom so he was not in our room with us.  It was such a great trip and I can't wait until we get to go to Palmyra later this summer!