puzzles

So, my sister sent us these puzzles from Japan for Christmas and they are really cool. Both kids enjoy them a lot. But, we were surprised how good Ansel is at them. The hardest one is brown and has 20 pieces and he can totally do it. One day I overheard Isabel asking Ansel for help with the brown puzzle! I was thinking....isn't this backwards? Ansel will spend a lot of time concentrating on his puzzles and practicing, I guess that's why he's so good at them. I certainly enjoy the time they spend with the puzzles too!

ansel's feet

So, Ansel likes to take pictures with the camera. I think he learned this from Isabel. He has only learned how to take pictures of his feet. We try to teach him to aim the camera away from him, but it's just so much easier for him to push the button holding the camera backwards and downward.

dinner table talk

We were eating dinosaur chicken nuggets the other night and Isabel bit off the head, dipped it in ketchup and said her dinosaur was bleeding. We try not to play with our food, but we all had to laugh at that. And how do you not play with food like that, anyway?

During the same meal, Joseph had asked Ansel if he wanted ketchup and he said no. Then, a few nuggets later Ansel called to Joseph in the kitchen and said, "Yes, I would like some ketchup." We thought it was pretty funny.

new clothes

So, I think I've mentioned before how difficult it is to get a good smiling picture of Ansel. He is sporting some new outfits from Kohls. (thanks for introducing me to that store mom. I got some great deals!) I've wanted to buy him some cute church clothes for a long time and finally did yesturday. Also, I love the pajamas because they are miniature adult pjs.

the monkey gym

I got Lincoln a little monkey gym. I'm not sure if we will keep it because the arm is not very stable and will fall over sometimes. But this is the closest thing to a smile that we have been able to capture on film. (It's a little smile, right?!) Lincoln is a very good baby and will smiles back at us when we smile at him. It's SO cute.

american thinker

We were very excited that http://www.americanthinker.com/ published another one of Joseph's articles and today, inauguration day. Our new president has been compared to abraham lincoln a lot and the article shows how they are really opposites.

dvd players

Joseph goes to work early and will often put out some food and entertainment for our kids to find when they wake up in the morning so they will let me sleep longer. Well, one morning he had our portable dvd player going with a movie and some cereal and gatorade for the kids. You have probably guessed it already, the gatorade spilled all over the dvd player and the screen turned black. I got the dvd out and put the player aside. I told Joseph to take a look at it because he is good at fixing things, but I was sure it had permanently bit the dust.

We were all disappointed because we left most of our things at our house in Provo, including our TV. Well, yesturday I finally broke down and got another portable DVD player. We let Isabel have the broken one and she carried it around everywhere and called it her laptop. Today Joseph and the kids were taking apart Isabel's "laptop" for fun and they plugged it in and turned it on and it worked!! I was shocked. They put it back together and it works almost like new. I will happily return the new one tomorrow.

Now, I don't know if any of you reading this have ever owned a portable dvd player before, but we had two durabrand one's that lasted two months (and all we did was watch movies on them, no spills). We have actually gone through many brands of regular dvd players such as sony, emerson, and RCA. After having so many dvd players go bad, I decided to get a higher quality one at Costco. I had never heard of the brand Audiovox before, but I thought since it was at Costco I would try it. We have had this Audiovox for over a year and after surviving this spill, I will never try another brand (if I ever have to buy another one....who knows, the way this one works, it will probably last forever!!!)

the fruit train

I did some out of control shopping at Sam's Club today and the kids were having a lot of fun playing with the food. They took train rides on a box with 8 apple sauce jars and two huge peach cans. Why do I even bother buying toys for my kids?!

vehicles

This is an older photo, but I like it. It was pretty cool to see them unloading our vehicles. We have the third car on top and the van on the bottom. It was so nice not having to drive our vehicles out here!

gingerbread cookies

We didn't do a gingerbread house this year for Christmas (I think I like it better than anyone else in my family). I found these gingerbread cookies at Kmart for 75% off the original price and I couldn't resist. So, we had an exciting family home evening tonight. I let the kids do whatever they wanted and both went very heavy on the frosting. You can probably tell that Isabel's favorite color is purple now.

kids

Lincoln has started smiling, but we've been having trouble catching it on film. But we've been wanting to put some new photos up.

He likes the bouncy chair, just like our other kids did.

We wrap Lincoln up as a little "baby burrito" (we like to call it) because all of our kids have loved to be swaddled. In fact my sister Tamra introduced me to the little swaddle me outfit/blankets that velcro them in a swaddle. And I absolutely LOVE them. Anyway, we were playing around and the older kids wanted to be swaddled. They thought they were so funny.... and they were!

Isabel is such a helpful big sister. She loves to feed Lincoln and carry him around a lot. I let her do it a little, it makes us a little nervous. One time I asked her where she was taking Lincoln and she said downstairs. I'm like....um, no. That's just what I need: children tumbling down the stairs. Anyway, I can't believe that she will start kindergarden next fall. I will miss her a lot.

hobbies

Whenever people ask me what my hobbies are I can't really think of anything to say. Sometimes I'll say I have three hobbies: Isabel, Ansel and Lincoln. Anyway, I'm still working on finding some good hobbies for me while I have young children. But, Joseph has some hobbies and one of them is writing. He recently had a piece published on the website American Thinker. It ran on Jan 3rd, 2009. Check it out here: http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/01/is_religion_necessary.html