watch and learn

It's been forever.  I know.  Let's ignore that fact and enjoy a new cute video of Oliver:

Also, don't you want to come for a ride with us?  It's so fun.  This went on for about 15 minutes:

Maybe I'll post again sometime.

tiny dancer

He's a dancer.

since we last talked...

- My computer stopped letting me upload pictures to my blog without making me wait for forever.  That's why I haven't been around lately.

- Oliver became a full blown toddler.  Walks everywhere now.  Unless Zach is home, in which case he's crying if he's not being held.

- Maxwell gave me this winning face:


- Quinn started sounding out words.  This will likely be the last year that I can make a Christmas list of who's getting what and be able to leave it lying around.  He also insisted on wearing these to school and told his teacher he had to sit on the front row because he can't see:

- One of us really can't see and ended up getting glasses.  After an awful experience where a girl narrowly missed hitting me and three of my friends, but ended up hitting my friend's dog instead (who survived and is fine, miraculously), I kept hearing the phrase, "Did I hit a person????  I didn't see any of you!!" repeat through my head every time I got in the car.  It was haunting.  And easily the worst experience of my life.  So I got glasses to help make sure I never put anyone else through a similar experience.  Luckily, the thick nerdy glasses style is in:

- We counted down to Christmas with great (and sometimes terrible) anticipation:

- Almost all of us got sick on Christmas day (everyone but Zach - he had it the week before) and spent the entire holiday season recovering (we're all still coughing).  I took this picture on Christmas Eve (In their matching Christmas jammies, opening a Christmas book from Nanny and Poppy) right before the kids went to bed, and didn't take another picture for like, four days - way to document Christmas, Mama:

- The boys were beyond thrilled to have Papa home for so long and barely left him alone the entire time:

- My sewing machine and I made an abundance of hot pads and a few other things that I need to take pictures of at some point:

 

And since this took me all day to put together because of my computer's fantastic uploading time, I'm going to go put kids to bed. Then I'm going to lounge on the couch with the hubs and a black cherry cream soda and say "So long," to our Christmas vacation.

Happy 2013, everyone.  May this new year be a blessed one.

hold on to your uterus

Seriously though.

mr. show off

Here's Oliver's best impression of an old man:

smarty pants

Quinn and Max are both loving school/preschool this year.  As a parent it's been awesome to see them get so excited about the things they are learning (apparently I had really low expectations....).  I keep finding pieces of paper lying around the house that have 1-20 written on them. One of the papers had a huge 100 on it with fireworks bursting out of it.  Quinn is super excited about the idea of knowing how to count to 100 (not there yet, but getting there).  I went to his class yesterday to parent help and I was amazed to see Quinn be so on task and studious.  It was like I was in the twilight zone.  That's not the kid I know.  But I'm not complaining!  I was so prepared for him to have all this homework that was going to be such a hassle and would take time away from him playing, but it turns out he LOVES doing his homework.  WEIRD.

Anyways, I really just wanted to share these cute pictures from yesterday.  I could hear max on the other side of the living room quietly repeating, "M-A-X, M-A-X..." for the longest time.  I didn't know what he was up to till he brought me this awesome piece of paper:

While he was doing that Quinn was busy writing a letter (he can't spell/read yet, so he was telling me what he wanted to say and I was giving it to him letter by letter).  He randomly brought me a piece of paper and said, "Mama, I'm going to write a letter to Marc Brown."  I said, "Who's Marc Brown?" And he said, "He's the illustrator!  I want to ask him how he puts the names in all the books!"  I guess Marc Brown hides his kids' names in all of his books and Quinn has been trying to find them in the Arthur library books that we have.  So he wrote him a letter that included a picture of our town (aka: Utah) and Marc Brown's town, which, based on the picture I assume is New York, and a picture of a book with Quinn's name on the cover.  Then we stuck it in an envelope and put the address that's listed on the guy's website and Quinn stuck in the mailbox.  When he came back in the house he whispered to me, "I really hope he writes me back!"  And let me just say right now - Marc Brown, you better write him back.

And since this cannot be left unshared, here's Quinn's Kindergarten picture:

We can't stop laughing about it.  What the heck is that??  I mean sure, it's cute.  He's cute.  But he's way cuter than that.  My best guess is that they showed him a picture of Stephen Hawking and said, "See if you can smile like that guy!"  And thus, this face.  The best part, as Zach pointed out to me - We paid for this picture.  I don't know how Quinn, the skinniest kid on the planet, managed to give himself a double chin.