Shauna and I have a rule. We do not go more than 2 months without seeing each other. Really it would be stupid to since we are both totally dependent upon one another to keep our sanity and we are only 3 hours apart. This time it was Shauna's turn to come see us :) And we got the added bonus of my dad planning my mom a weekend trip for Valentine's day to see the grandbabies (but mostly so my dad could meet Evalee :). My girls were so excited to meet and hold their new cousin, the first girl cousin on my side of the family. I don't think Shauna was here for two minutes before we took these pictures lol.
Grace had been saying for days that when Evie got here she was gonna hold her hand and say "nice to meet you Evalee." And she did. It was hilariously cute. Here is a video from a few days before she came. I did not prompt this at all, other than telling her she'd meet her cousin. I sure love my Gracie.
I love how much my kids love Shauna. It's the best ever. And she's so good to them. We always joke that we love each other's kids an irrational amount for the fact that they aren't our own :)
My brother is doing his business class where they actually have to run a business. They are doing wings and steak fries in the crossroads on campus. So we went to grab some! We had to park way up where no one with 6 kids in tow should ever have to park. But these two boys snuggled each other the entire half mile walk. I'm serious, we were all dying. Anyone who knows Jordan knows that this is not normal for him! They played together so well all week! They shared and laughed and chased and didn't ever even squeal or fight. That's boys for ya!
Mimi hogged Evalee. But I allowed it because we got 2 days with Shauna that she wasn't here for :)
Beefy and Jordan aren't super excited about holding Evie. But I guess that's just the age lol.
I mean, seriously, she just melts me. She's so perfect and smiley and content and she sleeps so dang cute!
We introduced Grandpa to the Elephant and Piggie books by Mo Willem. They're our favorites. We get some every time we go to the library. Grandpa laughed and laughed with the girls. I love my dad.
Grace's favorite person in the whole world is "Untle Wessy." He is pretty great...
She's the cutes little naked ever!!!
My mom will hate this picture but it's the only one where he's not trying to push her off...he is smiling because he just stole her binky :)
And this is from a couple weeks ago, but it's so stinking cute. Ethan discovered drinking fountains at church and now he just dashes for them. I mean seriously, he beat us out of the chapel by a good 5 minutes yesterday, just wiggled through the crowd and made his way straight to the drinking fountain. At 15 months old he has officially hit the "oh my gosh, please go to nursery" phase where he refuses to sit on our lap and instead just gets into everyone's things, runs into the hall, tries to play the piano, etc. But I am actually enjoying it this time around. For the first time I'm not 8 months pregnant or toting a newborn so...my patience for his antics is a little more than it was with my girls, perhaps. Plus, he's just so dashing ;)
One more funny Ethan thing...so every day we facetime Shauna (seriously though, when we miss it we get depressed) and she always tries to get Jordan to say "Shiloh." So now Ethan has picked up on that. Jordan doesn't say it, but Ethan does, and he thinks it's Shauna's name! It cracks me up! And I encourage it because one thing that makes me sad about being a mom is that my kids don't call me Shiloh. I always loved how cute babies and little kids said it! And now I get to hear it all the time lol.
In short we had an amazing President's Day weekend with my family. Just as a side note, it was awesome to have my parents to ourselves (sorry siblings). They just got to be Mimi and Grandpa for a weekend and it was glorious. I hope they loved it as much as my kids did.
*Disclaimer: Tony and Torey were a great part of our weekend too, but somehow they didn't make it into any pictures...I guess that's what you get when you live here :S
I LOVE Valentine's Day. Probably a silly amount. But growing up, my mom always did a little 12 days of Valentine's for my dad and I adopted that tradition. I love it. It's so fun to come up with silly, simple, little gifts for my husband each day. It really helps me to focus on the positive and how much I love him. Because I really, really do. Especially lately. Turns out, if you spend more time with someone you love, you just love them more (at least for me lol). Truthfully, we don't spend THAT much more time together than we did when he worked at BYU-Idaho, but they are just different times. For one thing, he sees the kids every day, which wasn't always the case at BYU-Idaho. I get to watch him parent every day. And I have his help every day. He gets home at 4:30 instead of 11 at night so...I see him when I'm not totally wasted and half asleep. I see him for weekends, uninterrupted. For me, that's just so huge. Anyway, can you tell I LOVE our new job? I mean, for real. I thought that after 4 months the honey moon stage would be over but... ATS saved my life. It came at the perfect time for me and for our family and for our marriage (not that any of those things were in jeopardy, but we just really needed the change).
Okay. Valentine's Day. I apparently don't love it as much as our new job lol. SO the kids had a lovey dovey breakfast of heart pancakes :) They were all pretty excited :)
I don't really do gifts for the kids for Valentines day. To me, it's more of a husband/wife thing. But we do talk about loving everybody and each other and have a little treat :) They got little cups with some conversation hearts and pink sixlets. Ethan was so funny discovering them!
Scott and I kind of rotate who is in charge of the actual Valentine's date. I had 6 little bags with little gifts or activities in them all set up for him for when the kids went to bed. They all went to sleep within 10 minutes of bedtime, which was a miracle! We had so much fun together. It was such a great reminder of why we are best friends :) We can just laugh being silly and hanging out.
One of our little games was a challenge to see who could write our love story the best or most creative with 15 conversation hearts. It was so fun to read each other's stories and giggle about how we ended up married :)
Seriously, I don't know why, but this picture makes me so happy. Maybe it's because he's writing our love story. Maybe it's his glasses that I just think are super hot. Maybe it's that smile. And perhaps most of all it's that he's writing a love story with conversation hearts and going along with my mushy gushy game :) Let's be honest. It's the grilled pineapple! Mouth. Watering.
We cooked dinner together (appetizer night) and played a few games, had a bubble blowing contest (turns out you can blow giant bubbles with half a roll of bubble gum tape!) and I'll spare you the rest :) I love you so much Scott. You are so amazing and I am so glad that we are married. I am so glad that I chose you. I am so glad that we both ended up in our FHE group and that you dared to tell me you wouldn't date me (it's true what they say about forbidden fruit lol). I am so happy with our life and our marriage. You're the bestest ever. We love you so much. Happy February babe!
Oh my gosh. I didn't even blog about Christmas. It was wonderful. And crazy and busy and stressful lol. My kids all got deathly ill with some awful cold that rendered them all useless for days. Luckily, the Christmas festivities kept their spirits high. And their cousin ended up in the hospital with some infection that took him and my brother completely our of commission for a while...so hey, it could have been worse! We love being at Mimi's house. Christmas is just magical, isn't it? So much excitement and fun and gratitude and kindness. I'm just going to throw all these pictures here because I can't not. Forgive the few blurry ones I took before realizing that a kid had smeared my lens with something translucent :) Merry Christmas! Even if it is January :)
