Easter

We had such a great Easter celebration with Jan's family. She made such a wonderful dinner and decorated so perfectly. She is so Martha Stewart. We actually had plans with other family members, but my cousin has a newborn and my kids were getting over colds so we had to change our plans last minute. My cute and very talented cousin Amry was here with her dashing husband Dave. It was so great to catch up with family members that I had not seen in so long and some that Lance and the boys had never even met. They are all so talented-it's amazing! Actors, model, interior designer, photographer, shoe designer/artist, etc... Yeah. I know.

Amry, Haley, Karly

Dave & Cameron

(Jan's mother) Grandma Richards with Jackson

This is Jack sitting in the car for the first time after our picnic today.

Songs at Bedtime

Gavin's new favorite thing is drawing. He loves to draw on a doodle pro and will sit busily for like 20 minutes (which is quite long for a two yr old not watching tv)! He will ask me to draw all of his favorite animals and characters. He also loves coloring. I think he might have inherited some of his Aunt Angela's artistic abilities. Here is his latest...

medium used: Crayola Crayons

Every night when I put Gavin to bed I read him several books and then sing his favorite 4 songs which include (as he says them): "Old McDonald"(had a farm), "Twinkle Twinkle" (Little Star), "Merrily Merrily" (Row Row Row Your Boat), "Somewhere" (Over the Rainbow). He loves to sing along and say each animal during Old McDonald. Lately he's been adding things that one would not find on old McDonald's farm. Like a boat or a shark. Last night when we were singing, I paused as usual for his animal fill in "...on that farm he had a ____." Gavin smiled and cheerifully said "booger" while holding up a fine speciman on his finger. Eww gross! BOYS!

I have started cutting Lance and Gavin's hair. I was really nervous to do Lance's because he is so particular and has only found one stylist in San Diego that could do it right. With the help of her written instructions I think I cut it perfectly and Lance love's it too. He is estatic that we can save that $30 a month. Keep your fingers crossed for me that I can keep it up. By the way I'm not afraid to show a picture of his haircut, but I really don't have one yet.

My Sweetie Boys

My baby has teeth popping in all over! He has decided he is over baby food. He just wants whatever anyone else is eating. Poor Gavin has to guard his food diligently or it will be gone before he knows it. But he will share his boring cheerios-he likes to hand feed them to people. He also learned how to climb the stairs and laughs uncontrollably while doing it if anyone is behind him. He is such a fun guy. We still don't know if his eyes are going to change colors.
Here is Gavin chillin' on the bed having a snack. He's always loved wearing hats. He is such a sweet boy and he loves his brother. Yesterday he said, "Jacky, where aaaare yooooooou? Come play in room with meeee. Fun." It was just really cute. I love my boys.

Happy Birthday Mom!

My mother is the most talented and kind hearted person I know. She sacrifices so much for her family and is always finding ways to serve others. She is such a beautiful woman inside and out. She has always been such a wonderful example to her children and all that know her, love her. My favorite thing about her is that she has such a great sense of humor. As a child my sole reason for living was to make her laugh. I seem to have a talent for that and can still make her cry and/or pee her pants from laughing so hard. Lance is having a hard time without her Sunday dinners. Well, actually we all are. Gavin asked if we were going to her house today after church. He was very disappointed to keep hearing that grandmommy lives in this place called San Diego and that it keeps him from seeing her, Papa, Keldon and Ethan. We love you so much mom! Happy 40th birthday! Again.

Catching up!

We knew we had a few things to teach Gavin about using the toliet after this incident.
Take your clothes off before sitting down.
Don't fall in.
You don't need to unroll the whole roll of toliet paper, usually...

This is my favorite picture ever!
My dad holding Jackson for one of the few times before we moved. Aren't they handsome?
This was at our garage sale-Ya'll missed out!

This is what happens when your baby eats too many carrots-orange nose.
(I don't know what that black string above Gavin is. Weird.)


Here is Gavin the Sunday before we moved looking dapper. My sweet boy!



I have to wear a rain coat when bathing Jackson and now you can see why.
Gavin likes having his own tub so he doesn't have to bathe with the tsunami-maker.
This is Jackson favorite place to be besides attached to mom.

This is how the kids have to bathe because we only have a shower.

But they like it and it works!

This is the view from our backyard. Its very peaceful and serene.

I am baaaack!

There is no excuse for the lapse in my blogging, but I'll just list a few anyways.

-selling our house
-cleaning the house constantly for showings
-packing to move
-moving out of state
-applying for jobs (well, husbands job...)
-couldn't find my cable to download pics
-unpacking and lots of organizing
-kids keep me too busy day and night
-too tired because Jack doesn't sleep thru the night and acts like he is going to die if I'm not holding or plugging him
-do you want more?...

I can't believe we have been in Utah now for 3 weeks. Everyone is so nice and we are really enjoying our new home. We've experienced a lot of cold and snow-more than I ever wanted. The boys are adjusting to all of the changes quite well. Gavin is working on potty training and he now sleeps in a big boy bed. Although Jackson has not joined him in their room yet because it seems like every time he starts sleeping through the night something interrupts his cycle. Yes, I am sad to say that Jack, who is 8 months old, to my dismay, is still not sleeping through the night. I thought he would be trained by 3 months but because his digestive system did not cooperate we have had quite a mess on our hands with that. Kids are sooo different. Gavin's infancy seems so uneventful and easy now compared to Jack's. On top of the digestive problems he is also quite the screamer. He cries so loudly and vehemently that we think he might pop a blood vessel and this is all if the boob is not pacifying him. After moving here and dealing with these restless and tramautic nights with him I have finally decided he's going to have to just cry if anyone wants me to be a loving and patient mother throughout the day. Well, and night, since Lance works until 12:00 am... Jackson is really cute and so grown up lately. He stands in the closet and pulls out toys from the toy drawers that he wants to play with. He is also his brothers crawling shadow, though a little slower than Gavin. It's so fun to see their brotherly love develop.

Good news: we have already had the stomache flu that lasts a week (thanks to our first Sunday in nursery) so we are now immune! Whew, glad to get that out of the way.


We are excited for family and friends to visit us. You are all welcome anytime! We miss you! We have had a great welcome from family that live here though and that has helped soothe the wounds of leaving both sets of our parents and siblings behind a little.

Christmas

We had such a great Christmas! We spent the night on Christmas Eve at my parents house so that Gavin could wake up to a Christmas tree and beautiful decorations (and of course be with family). This was the first year that Gavin was old enough to kind of anticipate Christmas so it was really exciting for me and Lance. Santa brought Gavin a red roadster trike and a red helmet. He was more excited about wearing the helmet around than anything. My sister Nicole was in town with her family so we spent the majority of the past week over visiting with her and her daughters. Gavin loved playing with her 5 year old daughter Katie. And Jackson's playdates, (her 5 month old twin daughters) didn't do much this time around except drool, smile and look adorable. Sorry Jacky, maybe next time. Jackson surprised us all this past week by starting to army crawl. He can scoot anywhere so quickly we suddenly have to have him always on our radar. He is also getting his bottom teeth in so when he is not smiling he is wailing. I am so blessed to have both mine and Lance's families so close. We truly appreciate all that they do for us!

Spinning Horses

I took Gavin on the Carousel at Fashion Island and he thought he died and went to heaven!

He loved the horses and getting dizzy!

Visit with Santa

"Who is this fuzzy guy?"


"Okay-I guess he's alright."

This Santa handed out coloring books instead of candy canes which I thought was a brilliant idea. His beard was real, so I'm pretty sure this was the real one.

Has the World Stopped?

The kids are sick. Gavin had a head cold which he passed to Jackson on Thanksgiving. On top of the cold (which he still has) Jackson had the stomach flu, which scared me to death. I’ll leave out the details, but thank goodness my sweet baby is okay. Lance has been going about his normal days untouched by the sickness and the mayhem. As for me, it feels like the world has stopped. I have been lucky to get a shower for the past few days and I’ve pretty much always been dressed in my sexy sweats. We haven’t ventured outside for quite a while besides our balcony and courtyard. You can imagine that I’m a bit stir crazy. I’ve also been regularly scaring the realtors with my makeup-less face and unkempt hair. But they deserve it because they keep showing up unannounced. According to our viewing instructions they are supposed to give me at least a one hour notice. Trust me, the ones that saw me today will never make that mistake again. On top of the treat of my unsightly appearance they got to wait outside while I tidied up. If any of them knew the way our house has been bejeweled by Gavin, they would run the other way. But thanks to my brother’s great prowess, no one is the wiser. It helps to have a brother in the carpet cleaning business. Let’s just say we are one of Zerorez’ most consistent and loyal customers. All in all I think I will survive this week.

The mischief’s of Gavin (this week)
Unrolled a whole roll of toilet paper and strung it around house
Filled a new bottle of baby wash with water
Pulled flowers out of my pots
Peed on counter
Smeared poop into the carpet (while diaper was still intact)
Wrote on my desk with permanent ink
Scratched several DVDs

What makes it all worth it…
When he asks for a hug with those beautiful brown puppy dog eyes
When he laughs (even if it’s the evil villain laugh)
When he is kind to his baby brother (by smothering him with kisses, hugs and toys)
When he helps me clean (by wiping his greasy hands all over my clean glass tables with his invisible paper towel and happily singing “clean up!”)
When I remember that he starts kindergarten in September of 2011

Adventures

We stopped at the Newport Beach temple (while on the way home from Newport on Saturday) which is gorgeous. That would be a fun date night -dinner and the temple.

Today we had 2 showings of the house at 2 & 6 pm. Therefore I spent most of my day picking up after my whirlwind Gavin or as I like to call him my Tazmanian Devil. I think I picked up the same things about 4 times each today. My kids didn't get naps because of the 2 o'clock showing. I finally layed Gavin down and 30 minutes later I could still hear him so I went and checked on him and he had miraculously pulled poop from his diaper while his diaper was perfectly intact with duct tape around the top! That's always fun cleaning up that when you have a showing in an hour!

I took the boys to the temple today to walk around on the grounds. It was perfect timing because we were able to see the assembling of the nativity. Gavin wanted to get up on all the animals. Our temple is so beautiful. I can't wait to go back when everything is lit up.