6/22/10

Father's Day...

I really love Father's day. It might be because I have the BEST dad on the planet and my kids could say the same about theirs. These two men teach me so much! My dad....his helpfulness is bordering on crazy! I can't even begin to say how much he helped us when we moved. When we bought the Escape from him he put new tires on it, had it detail cleaned, new floor mats, tuned up and bought a dvd player to put in it for Emma. I bet no one else can say that about a used car they bought! :) My dad loves to spoil me and I know he does it to show me how much he loves me. I once mentioned that I wanted to buy some silicone spatuals. A few days later I had a package on my porch with Rachel Ray spatulas inside. Surprise packages are the best! The kids and I stayed for a month at my parents house after I had Levi. He took great care of us! He always loves to tease and have fun. Emma loves Grandpa Cashew. She calls him that because he always has one of those big tubs of cashews from Costco. Emma loves to "share" them.
We sent him a couple new shirts for Father's Day. In the package we included lots of candy. We printed out a tie on cardstock and Emma painted it with puffy paint. After he got the package we called him on skype. He was wearing one of the shirts and the tie! Emma thought it was hilarious and kept saying "Grandpa thinks it's a real tie that you wear." He is a fantastic Grandpa! In a couple weeks I am headed to Utah to visit. I just found out that my dad is worried about me driving alone with the two kids. I feel fine about it. I figure I can stop anytime I need and even make it a two day trip. I talked to my mom the other night and they are flying out here on the 7th. Then my dad is flying home and my mom is driving with me back to Utah. :) Maybe one day I will be all grown up and able to take care of myself...until then I will just enjoy being taken care of. I love you DAD!

Ivan is the best Daddy! Emma loves that with his new job he is able to come home and have lunch with us. He loves spending time with her also. He is really good with Levi too and is great about changing diapers and the whole deal. There are not a lot of men out there like this. I am happy that I have one in my life! Ivan is a really good sport and pretty much does anything that Emma wants him too. She loves to go outside and play soccer with her daddy. The best thing about Ivan is that he is REALLY patient. You could probably guess that seeing how he lives with me! For Father's Day I made a flip book for Ivan on Heritage Makers. I took pictures of it so I could share it with you! Emma helped me come up with reasons she and Levi love their Daddy....



















6/18/10

Pictures of my happy kids...

Levi is such a happy baby! He smiles whenever you look at him! He loves to watch Emma dance around and play and gets so excited when she talks to him. She loves to help take care of him and is pretty sure he ALWAYS needs his diaper changed. haha I was struggling with the air conditioner the other day and only had it on fan. It got pretty hot in our house...that's why Levi's shirt is off. Here are some pictures of them being crazy. Look how fat Levi is! LOVE HIM!




6/16/10

Yet another park...


We have had fun discovering all the fun parks around here. Emma's favorite thing to do is go to the park and Ivan and I are just happy to be outside! The weather has been fantastic here. It has been in the upper 70's and low 80's with a little breeze. In my mind that is PERFECT weather! Last night we had to run to Tioga to the grocery story so we decided to check out the parks there. We found a HUGE one! It had a basketball court, tennis court, baseball field, several sets of swings, a new playground, old toys and lots and lots of grass. It would be the perfect park for a large gathering. Emma loved the old metal horse swings. Once she figured out how they worked I wasn't sure we would get her off of them! Here's some pics.




6/15/10

Ramblings and a few pics...

After church on Sunday I took some pictures for a friend of mine. Her little girl is just a couple weeks younger than Levi. She is super cute. She is as long as levi but not near as filled out. The pictures are on my Snapbandz blog if you're interested. A funny thing happened at church. There is a lady in our ward that just had her baby a couple weeks ago so she hasn't been to church. During Sacrament meeting she walked by our row. She stopped and looked at Levi and said "WOW! He is a big boy!" Yep. I know. I just thought it was funny that she went out of her way to tell me about it DURING sacrament meeting. I can't believe how many new babies we have in our ward. I can think of at least six that are Levi's age or newer. There is also a girl in our ward that is having her identical twin baby girls today. We have been told that there are 30+ new families going to move into our ward in the next couple months. I just don't know where any of them are going to live. We already have several families living in campers and hotels. I guess we were lucky to find a place to live. There are twin boys that are moving into the ward in July that will be in my primary class. I think that will make 3 sets of twins in our ward.

On Memorial day there was a little girl in our ward that got hit by a truck. She had to be life flighted to another hospital. She is in a cast now from her chest to her ankles. That would be MISERY! She has to stay in the cast for 4 to 6 weeks. She had to have major surgery on her pelvis. She is 6 and is in my primary class. Her family is pretty inactive and I had never met her. On Sunday they were at church. She is a beautiful little girl and it breaks my heart that that happened. They have her on a stretcher looking thing. They had to sit on the front row so they had somewhere for her. They left after sacrament meeting and I didn't get a chance to meet her. I talked to my class about it a little bit. We were talking about nice things that we can do for other people and one of the little boys said pray. We all decided it would be a nice thing if we would pray for Berlynn. I think I might have the kids color her pictures and we can send her a package.

After I took pictures of Kelly's little girl we stopped at the park for a minute before our long ride home. The ride home was extra long this time because Ivan decided to go the LONG way. It was a beautiful day though. I LOVE this new dress I bought for Emma. I had some new black flowers for Snapbandz and needed something to go with them. :) I can't believe how big Emma is getting. The other day we were having dinner and Ivan and I were having a discussion. Emma said "are you two gunna quit fighting now?" We just both had to laugh. We weren't fighting but I can see how she thought we were. I guess I need to work on being nice....we all already knew that though. :) Last night Ivan told me that when she said her prayers she prayed that "mommy would quit being mean to us." What the world? I was sooooo nice yesterday. We played and made puffy paint and painted pictures and made Father's Day packages to send to the Grandpas. We also had candy (from the packages) and she helped me clean the house. The only time I got mad was right before bed because she was being crazy and not getting ready for bed. Oh well. I guess I will have to see if I can be NICER today. haha





After a couple years now Ivan randomly decided to shave his goatee. When he came in and showed me I couldn't quit laughing. Then he went in the other room and I heard Emma say "you look like a potato now." She is a funny kid and he does kind of look like a potato! I put this story on facebook and Matt commented and asked if I remember when our Dad shaved his mustache and we all thought he was Uncle Farrell. It was scary how much they looked alike. We should be able to tell them apart though because my Dad wears glasses and has brown eyes and Farrell is the opposite.

Another funny story. The other day Emma saw a mouse!!! I HATE mice! I could hear her in her room crying. I went in and asked her what was the matter. She was in the corner and had tears rolling down her face. She said "there was a mouse in my shoe bin and it ran under my bed!!" Then she kept saying "yeah....and it's not the kind that is hard to see!" For some reason she has imaginary baby mice that are her pets. She was just making sure that I understood that she was talking about a real live mouse she saw...not a pretend one. It was sooooooo funny! She said the same thing when we called Daddy to tell him about it. A little while later I saw the mouse run down the hall and again when Ivan was home for lunch. We have been sanitizing like crazy! We have mouse bait and actually found one dead in the laundry room yesterday. Ivan found humor in the situation though. He said that it was behind the washer. When he pulled the washer out he saw a thing of pez that was chewed through and the little guy was dead right by it. Ivan said it must have been a pez overdose. haha I just wanted to know why there was pez behind the washer. They must have fallen out of a pocket or something.
Life if good and we are enjoying living here. The weather has been fabulous though....so maybe ask me again in a few months when we are snowed in and freezing!

6/11/10

Family Fun

On Wednesday Ivan had to go to scouts in Williston so Emma and I decided we would ride into town with him and go to see Marmaduke. For those of you who haven't seen the previews, this is a movie about a great dane who gets into mischief. Owen Wilson is the voice of this big dog. Emma thought the movie was fabulous. It was funny but I am really not into talking animals. haha The best part was at the end when all the dogs danced. She had seen this on the preview and had talked about it the entire movie. When we fist were walking into the theatre she told me that she left Koda and her baby mouse in the car. I said "well I guess it's just the two of us then." Then she started bawling! :) I had to laugh. The lady at the candy counter started to talk to her and then said, "maybe I shouldn't make it worse." I said, "She's fine. She's just upset that she left her imaginary friend in the car." The lady thought that was pretty funny. Then Emma picked sour patch kids for her treat even though I told her she wouldn't like them. We sat down and she put a green one in her mouth and started to cry. Apparently it was sour. We went and picked some runts instead. After all the drama we had a good time! There was just us and one other lady with her two kids in the theatre. It was fun to get out with just Emma. I think she needs some one on one time since Levi has joined our family and gets A LOT of attention. I was grateful that Ivan was willing to take Levi with him to scouts.


Last night we decided to make our own pizzas. Emma thought this was the best thing ever. She really like adding the sauce and the cheese...A LOT of sauce and cheese. We tried the pillsbury dough and the generic to see if there was a difference. Pillsbury definitely won this battle. The dough was sweet and sort of crispy. YUM! We also used fresh tomatoes, basil, mushrooms and green onions. We had to have pepperoni too of course. We tried a couple different kids of pesto also. They were a basil pesto and a sun dried tomato pesto. Both were delicious. Ivan really liked "the green one." Emma really loves to help in the kitchen and always seems to eat better when she helped make whatever we are eating.


6/3/10

ZOO!






We decided to check out the Minot Zoo on Memorial Day. It was really fun. Minot is about an hour and a half away. We made it a pretty relaxed day. We hung out at home for most of the morning and then headed out. We went to lunch when we got there and then hit the mall for a while. We spent about 4 hours at the zoo that afternoon. Emma was pretty tired since she decided to stay up WAY LATE the night before...that explains the pictures with the "attitude." It was fun to just have a day to hang out with our little family. Emma said her favorite thing at the zoo was the monkeys "because they are so silly." Most of the animals seemed to be sleeping while we were there...guess it must have been nap time. The weather ended up being perfect and it wasn't too crowded.



Thanks for stopping by!