Happy Birthday Kaylyn!!

 On January 11th Kaylyn turned 2! For her birthday, we went to the Children's Discovery Museum and then had a little family party at home that evening. Here is the cake and table set up:

 

 Blowing out the candle :)

 Some more fun party pics...

  

 

 

 HAPPY BIRTHDAY KAYLYN!

This is what happens when a 3 year old refuses to take a nap...

Christmas 2012

I just love Christmas time. We had a great Christmas. Here is our tree. This picture is from early in December - as you can tell by the small amount of presents :)

 Here are some fun, cute Christmas pictures I took of the kids to put in Christmas cards to the great-grandparents.

 We went to see Santa at the mall. This year we discovered the "express pass." If you pre-pay for your picture package and pay a few extra dollars - it was only like 3 or 5 - you get to cut to the front of the long, long line to see Santa. So worth it!! You don't have to stand forever in line and the kids aren't all cranky by the time you get to Santa. James did so much better this year with sitting in Santa's lap. He even talked to Santa and told him he wanted trains and cars for Christmas. Kaylyn, on the other hand, did not do as well, as you can see from the picture. Maybe she'll do better next year. :)

 Here are the kids on Christmas Eve in their new pajamas :)

 Santa came!!

 Here are the kids opening their way-too-many presents on Christmas morning. :) Michael's mom flew down from Seattle for a few days, so she was here for Christmas and was able to see the kids open their presents. We also got my parents on the web cam, so they could see them open presents, too. :)

 

 

 

 

 

Halloween 2012

We did a lot of fun Halloween activities this year. We went to a pumpkin patch with inflatable bounce houses and slides...

 

 ...and, of course, pumpkins :)

 

For our Halloween FHE, we had mummy hot dogs for dinner...

 ...painted pumpkins...

 (finished product)

 ...and ate pumpkin shaped cupcakes :) Yum!

 

 

And, of course, we went trick-or-treating! :) First we went trick-or-treating at Michael's office.

Little monkey!

And Percy the Train!

 

And to the Halloween party and trick-or-treating at church.

 

And then we also went trick-or-treating to a few houses around the block on Halloween (lots of candy this year!). I didn't get any pictures of that though. But since Michael was in Japan for Halloween we took these cute pictures of the kids all snuggled in bed to say good night to Daddy.

 

Kaylyn + laptop = bad

Recently, we got a monitor and keyboard to convert the laptop to a desktop. And this is why....

It started with one or two keys that were a little loose. Kaylyn would keep prying them off, but the connector pieces were still attached, so I could just pop the keys right back on. Then Kaylyn started prying the keys off, pulling off the connectors pieces and then chewing them up into an unrecognizeable piece of mangled plastic. So there were a few blank spots on the keyboard...At first it wasn't really a big deal because it was just some arrow keys, an atl key, and a few of the numbers - nothing I didn't already know where it was and could easily find without a label. Then the missing keys spread into the letters, and by the time we were down to only like 15 or 20 keys left (most of which were the function buttons on the top row), it was just too difficult to type anything. So, now the laptop just sits under the desk and serves only as a hard drive. :) The set up is actually pretty nice. The screen is bigger. And if we watch a show on Netflix, it's almost like having a TV in living room :)

August 2012

I am really glad that Kaylyn is such a good eater. James is the pickiest little thing - ever since he could eat solid food, it has been such a struggle to get him to try new foods or eat anything besides a select few foods. Kaylyn will eat pretty much anything you give her, and if you are eating something in front of her, you better be prepared to share. :) This month we discovered she really likes blueberries. She'll just sit and snack on them right out of the carton.

 

 She also enjoys chocolate pudding...a lot :)

 We also discovered that Kaylyn needs to be kept out of the kitchen. After many pantry shelf raids, and one dumping sugar all over the living room incident, we decided we need to block off the doorway to the kitchen. The problem is that the doorway is kind of wide - wider than any of the gates we could find at the store. So, for a while we just blocked it with a big dry erase board. But that wasn't heavy enough and after watching us enough times, she figured out she could just slide to the side a little and squeeze into the kitchen. :) Then we used a folded card table, which did the trick of keeping her out, but boy was that annoying to move out of the way every time we needed to get into the kitchen. Then, at last I found a wide enough gate on Amazon, and it came in the mail...

Yay! It fits, and it keeps Kaylyn out! :)

This month James learned how to cut with scissors! He has been really interested in art type projects lately - coloring, painting, gluing - and really wanted to cut with scissors. So, we went to Target and he picked out some little kid safety scissors. Then he went to town on a bunch of paper from the printer. :) At first all he would do was cut little slits and make a fringe around the edge of the paper because he didn't quite understand how to keep the scissors in place and continue across the page. After a while he figured it out though, and now he can cut the paper in half, and in lots of little pieces :)

 

 

 Most days James will go down for a nap just fine. He may sing or talk to himself for a little while, but will fall asleep eventually for at least 2 hours. Recently, however, he has decided that some days he doesn't need a nap and will be stubborn and refuse to go to sleep, so he just has "quiet time" while Kaylyn sleeps. Other days, though, he tries to be stubborn, and gives up halfway through his escape attempt. :)

 Some cute pics...

 

 ...and silly pics :)