Oh yeah, I have a blog...

So, lately, when I have free time, I find I would rather read a book than do anything on the computer.  Haha, it is just so fun being a bookworm.  The kids have gotten better at letting me curl up with an open book, too (imagine how Grant used to force my book closed and yell "ee oh!!" for "the end!!").

Anyway, before I get back to reading, here is a quick recap on our past (very busy) few months:

We had a fabulous Christmas with both families, up until Leah got some sort of stomach flu :(

Then we all got sick for a while, and then visited our families again when Matthew had a presentation at a conference in Vancouver.

Then... we went to DISNEYWORLD!!  It was soooo fun.  I want to go back already!  I know it will be a loong time before we go again, but I just can't stop thinking about how much fun we had!

(Someday this deserves its own post, or even an entire blog, but this mention will have to do for now.)
And in case you are wondering, our kids were AWESOME!  They were sweethearts on the flights (thank you, Grandpa and Grandma and Uncle Jeremy and almost-Aunt Yunjoo!) and the funnest little buddies to have at the parks!

Grant got sick on the last day, then I got sick the next day, Leah got sick the day after, and Matthew got sick the day after that.  You know how it goes.  It was the kind of illness (some kind of coldish-flu mix) that just sticks around for weeks.  We finally just got over the last of the symptoms!  Sad thing is, though, that my parents and niece and nephews all got sick too, right after getting home from Florida.  At least we weren't sick for the whole trip!

Afterwards, Uncle Dan came home!  Actually, he's Matt's brother, but we call him Uncle Dan around the kids :)  Uncle Dan has been in Brazil on a church mission for the past two years, so this was his first time meeting Grant!  (We went to the airport to greet him when he arrived, but all my pictures are blurry... everyone was moving, and it was indoors, and well, I just didn't end up with any pictures worth putting up here.)

And now that we're all feeling a bit better, and we have no more trips on the horizon, we're ready for life to get back to normal (while trying to figure out what 'normal' even is).  And now, if you'll excuse me, I think I'll get back to my book... I was just getting up to an exciting part :)

Cute kiddos

Grant was so sad when he couldn't find what he wanted to play with...

...then so happy when I found it for him!  This was the first time I got him to smile on command and say "eeee!".

Snowflakes

One of our favorite winter traditions is cutting paper snowflakes.  In Utah, we would start cutting them at the first snowfall of the year.  Here, that might not happen, so we just started a little after Thanksgiving :)

Check out this year's creations!

Decorating

It is amazing what a mess it takes to make our place look so pretty!

This was the first time we let Leah help us decorate.  She was a very good girl!  And she got to stay up realllly late :)

Grant woke up the next morning and was completely enchanted by all the lights!  And the buttons on this Christmas pillow.  He loves pointing out buttons :)

Happy girl!

And happy boy!

Four years old!!!

Leah turned four last weekend!  This was such a fun birthday for Leah.  She was sooo excited about every little thing!  It was really easy (and fun) to make her feel special, since she was full of birthday excitement already!  

 

Here's our beautiful birthday girl in her new birthday dress.

Ready for church!

Hugging her gigantic birthday balloon!

Opening presents!  (We had a "family party" on Leah's actual birthday.)

Leah with all her presents and wrapping paper!

For weeks before her birthday, Leah consistently told us that she wanted "muffins and carrots... and broccoli" for her special birthday dinner.  So that's what we gave her!  (We rounded out the meal, don't worry.)

Happy birthday to Leah...

Blowing out FOUR candles!  (again)

 Just loving her new sleeping bag and enormous balloon!

Sharing with baby brother... just a tiny guy with a big balloon :)

Leah's first birthday party

No, not a party for her first birthday... ;)

This was the first time we had a birthday party for Leah where we invited her friends to celebrate.  Our neighbors have a little girl who turned three the day before Leah turned four, so we got together and combined birthday parties.

We had a yummy ice cream bar.

We had yummy cupcakes and cupcake cones.

Blowing out FOUR candles!

Back for more sugar... ice cream!

Looks like it was a hit!

We played pin the cherry on the ice cream, red light green light, and musical "squares", and had a coloring activity.

Overall, I think all the kids had fun together.  Leah was in heaven the entire time!  She had so much fun playing with all of her little friends at the same time, and that is exactly why I wanted to do this for her birthday.  I think it was a success :)

Thanksgiving

We went on a nice trip to Vancouver/Ridgefield for Thanksgiving. 

Hanging out with the cousins!

We went to the Pearson Air Museum for the Festival of Trees.  Just as expected, Grant loved the airplanes :)

You could just see it on his face: "Mom, Mom, look at the airplanes!"  Of course, it came out more like "Uh, uhh!!"

They had a little kid area.

And Santa was there!  While we were waiting in line, we told Leah that Santa would ask her what she wanted for Christmas.  "What are you going to tell him, Leah?  A doll, a book, a ball, a toy?"  Leah peeked inside his basket and said, "I'm going to say 'a candy cane'!"

And some yummy "snowball" cookies :)

Watching the leaves fall...

I just love fall.  In fact, I have loved watching all of the changing seasons this year.  It is amazing to watch how things change outside, from one kind of beautiful to another.

We had all the pretty shades of fall colors around here, and now they are all falling to the ground!  But now it is a cold beauty, that makes me want to cozy up inside with my family, turn on the Christmas lights, and look at it all through the window :)

Watching the leaves fall off with each storm.  (These are all within a week or two of each other.)

Three leaves left on the tree outside our door.

One leaf left!  (As I write, this one is gone, too.)

Yes, I even think the fields of dead weeds are beautiful :)

Happy Fall!

New words

Here is a list of words that Grant can say (with proper meaning most of the time):

Hi (Grant's first word was the same as Leah's)
Doggy (this word can mean almost any animal too, and most things)
Kitty (he says it "kiggy")
Daddy
Bath (more like a whispered "bahhh")
Uh-oh
GO-GO-GO (spoken whenever he sees a sports game on TV, or during the opening song of The Cat in the Hat)
Peekaboo ("pee-uh-oo")
Apple ("appo" or "appu")
All gone ("ah-gin", but you can tell what it means because he says it whenever something is all gone!)
Eye

And a lot of grunts and pointing fill in the rest.  It's amazing what you can understand from a grunt, a tone of voice, a point, and a specific facial expression!

Little walker

Here's our little Grant buddy!  About 2-3 weeks ago, he decided that 17 months was old enough, and he took his first step.  He had been standing up a lot on his own for a while, but just felt like crawling was easier and faster.  Little by little, though, he found out that walking was kinda fun!  He would just have this huge grin every time he took a step or two, even though he usually fell down pretty quick.  But, practice makes perfect, as they say.  And our little guy gets better every day.  Leah loves to hold his hands as he walks.  And Grant has figured out that it is sometimes faster to walk than to get down, crawl, and get back up.

I just love watching him walk.  It makes him so happy.  And he is the cutest thing ever!  (Sorry, but a mom can love her kid, right? :) )

Halloween, take two!

So I didn't have time to write anything when I posted the Halloween pictures, but now I do... so I'll tell y'all a little about what in the world you're looking at!

Saturday night (October 29) was our church's "trunk-or-treat", where everyone comes to the parking lot, opens up the trunks of their cars, and hands out candy to the kids.  Leah had decided to be a blue butterfly back in August I think, which was perfect because the dollar store had butterfly wings, and pipe cleaners are super cheap, too... Thanks, Leah!  Uh, back to Saturday.  Leah was adorable going from car to car, and sometimes, in all the confusion, going to the same one twice in a row.  Grant was a little overwhelmed by all the people, but was fine once we got him out of the stroller to carry him.  When we got home, Leah immediately wanted to share her candy with us.  What a sweetie :)

(Not Halloween-related)
Sunday, Leah got to say her little part in our church's Primary program (kind of a special meeting where the kids have little speaking parts and sing songs for everyone... it's awesome).  She did a great job with her part, but was too distracted and having too much fun to sing very much of the songs :)

(Back to Halloween-related)
The pumpkins!  Matthew's was the scary face (as usual), Leah wanted the robot, mine was Mike Wazowski (can you tell?  Leah wanted me to do a monster, so I tried to do Mike.), and we chose a doggy for Grant in honor of his most favorite word.  And oh, the pumpkin seeds!  I look forward to those every year.

Uh, we took Leah trick-or-treating around our apartments on Halloween.  Grant had fun pointing at the pumpkins everywhere and knocking on the doors as I held him up to them.  He got pretty heavy after a while though (strollers don't work very well with all the stairs to the apartments), so he got to hang out at home "helping" Matthew hand out candy.  Leah had so much fun.  My favorite part was when she saw (twice) a kid dressed up as something all white with a white mask covering his/her entire face, and she looked at him/her and said "Silly!!" (both times).

I think that about covers it.  Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween!

In the words of Leah

My favorite thing that Leah said all day, other than "Whoopsie that you did" (and "I love you" and "You're my best friend", of course!), came as she was reading a li-berry book. She had the following page open:

(From "The Cat in the Hat Knows a Lot About That: Oh Say Can You Say What's the Weather Today?")

Leah: "What happened to Thing One and Thing Two?"
Me: "Oh, do you think they changed clothes?"
Leah: "They changed clothes, and turned into Nephi!!"
:)

"Smile for the camera!"

I said those exact words, and this is what I got. Can't say I didn't try, right?

P.S. Though the blog gives no recent evidence of it, we are indeed alive and well :)

Pillows and blankets

Grant loves pillows and blankets. If we leave one out on the floor, he will crawl right over to it, bury his face in it for a few seconds, and then roll over it with a huge grin. It is the sweetest thing! I like to leave out pillows and blankets now... :)