Funny Kids

Well, yesterday was my due date and it doesn't look like this baby is ever going to come. Needless to say being over the due date doesn't put mommy in the best mood. Yesterday was a rough day and I was expecting the same today but my kids have been cracking me up all day.

The boys made "bunkbeds" on the stairs. Brayden was fake snoring and Matthew kept telling him that they couldn't go to sleep until they said their prayers so he was helping Brayden say his prayers. It was sweet.


We made cookies a few days ago, it was an adventure.



And today we decorated them. Matthew takes his work very seriously.

Brayden takes his eating very seriously.

Matthew also drew me a picture today. This is me with the baby in my tummy still (at least he has me smiling and he doesn't think I am a mean grumpy mom yet)

And then on the back he drew a picture of me with the baby out of my tummy. He then told me that we need to hang it on the door so everyone will know when the baby comes out! So if you come by just look for the sign! At this point I don't think that it will ever change but I am scheduled to be induced on Wednesday hopefully I don't have to wait that long but my kids are a little stubborn and tend to do things on their own.

4 going on 13

Matthew found my old Walkman the other day, it was buried under my bed and I forgot that I even had it. His first reaction was, "what the heck is this mom?" He knows how to work the ipod but this apparently looked like a foreign object.

This was Matthew for the rest of the day. I only have a few cassette tapes, a Garth Brooks, a mixed tape, and a church tape. Anytime I asked him to do anything he would tell me that he couldn't because he was listening to his music! Apparently he is turning into a teenager already.

And of course Brayden has to try out everything that Matthew does.

Here are some other things that have been going on:

Brotherly love! Matthew loves to play games on my computer and Brayden loves to just sit and watch him. It sure is nice when they are getting along :)

Here is another toy ad that Matthew cut out that he says he needs for Christmas. But this time he sat down and wrote his name for the first time ever! He has been trying to write his name for a while but he usually looses interest after the first few letters! I was so excited for him! And now he has been writing his name on everything (ok mostly just toy ads but it is a start, right?)

Nate and I went out on a date the other night to Outback and I had some left over steak that I was trying to eat for lunch the next day. But I didn't get to eat much because I had 2 little helpers!

Thanksgiving

This was the first year we have ever stayed home for Thanksgiving and the first year I have ever had to cook the whole dinner by myself. I was a little nervous but it wasn't too bad! I wish I would have taken a picture of the turkey cause it looked awesome! My brother did come up to spend the weekend with us and the boys love their Uncle Ryan. Uncle Ryan even downloaded fart noises to his phone(yes, I guess there really is an app for that!) and the boys thought that was the the funniest thing ever and may I add just what you want to hear while eating turkey. Oh well, I guess it is a boy thing because Ryan thought it was pretty funny too!

Matthew and Brayden enjoyed having Uncle Ryan help with the Christmas tree. Brayden followed him around saying, "Come on Ryan come on" Then would grab his hand and drag him back to the tree to help some more :)

I didn't do a great job of getting the placing the star on the tree shot this year as you can't even see Brayden in the pic. Oh well, this is the boys favorite part!

It was a nice weekend full of football and gassy noises but fun was had by all!

Christmastime at Disneyland

Well, this was our last hurrah before the baby comes. We went to Disneyland (of course!) the 13th & 14th of November(I know the post is a little late). It was so fun! Disneyland sure goes all out for Christmas and it was fun to get into the Christmas spirit! Here are some highlights:

The massive tree on main street. Not that you can tell from this picture as the lady took it up close but trust me it is pretty big!

Here we are waiting for the fireworks to start. We were standing in the street and this nice man asked me if I wanted to sit down on his bench for a little while since I was pregnant. It was so nice! I started talking to his wife and come to find out they live in Ucon, Idaho (just outside Idaho Falls). Small world (no pun intended)! We keep talking and come to find out some of her girls were in my mother-in-law's class at school. Even smaller world! Anyway, it was nice of him to let a poor pregnant woman sit down for a few minutes, I guess there are still considerate people in the world :)

Admiring the lights of small world.

We ate at this little BBQ place at the park and they have live music. This singing cowboy was walking around and singing and Matthew insisted that he needed to talk to him. And show him his picture! He sure isn't shy any more!

We also went to Santa's village and Matthew jumped right up on Santa's lap before this he has always been very afraid of Santa. Matthew told Santa that he needed more trains, tracks and cargo's for Christmas and that Santa needed to bring some for his Brayden brother too. Brayden wouldn't go too close to Santa, only close enough to grab a candy cane.

Matthew also decided that he isn't scared of the characters anymore and gave each one a big hug! It was pretty cute. Brayden was a different story and kept a safe distance!

3 out of the 4 looking, not bad! At least everyone was smiling!




Does this one really need a caption?

Brayden waiting for the Christmas parade to start. We had been walking around the stores just for something to do to kill time. Brayden broke this lollipop and I would have felt to guilty putting it back so I bought it. Talk about a rip off! And of course you can't buy something for one kid and not the other. $6.50 for 2 lollipops really? Oh well at least it kept them quiet while we waited for the parade to start!

Christmas List

So the past few Sundays in the paper we have been getting the store's toy catalogs for Christmas. My boys have been loving this. They lay the paper out on the ground and go page by page looking at all of the toys talking about which ones are cool (which is most of them).

Here is the Walmart ad. It looks like they fought over it, right? Nope Matthew gets out his scissors and cuts out all of the toys he really wants and...

Puts them on the fridge! Our fridge is almost completely covered in toys that we "need!" I wish I would have saved the Toys R US ad. Matthew didn't cut that one apart but circled all of the toys in the whole catalog! He even circled some of the girl stuff and when Nate asked him about it he told Nate that it was for me. What a nice kid!

Halloween 2009

Halloween just gets more fun each year as our kids get older and get more into it. We had 2 Thomas the Trains this year because our kids are train crazy!

Matthew with his pumpkin. I wasn't feeling all that great the week before Halloween so we didn't get out to get pumpkins until Halloween day and all of the stores were sold out! Luckily our neighbors had grown some and gave one to Matthew. It was pretty small and hard to carve but Matthew enjoyed watching me do it!

He was very spooky according to Matthew.

It has also been hilarious to see the boys with their candy. Brayden is very protective of his. On Halloween his bucket was pretty full but he wouldn't let anyone help him carry it, he wasn't letting it out of his sight!

When we get out the candy Matthew very carefully picks out 4 pieces (that is his favorite number, everything has to be done in 4s. Like when we are at the park I can't say, "2 more minutes and then we need to go" it has to be 4 minutes!). Then he unwraps each piece and slowly eats each one. Brayden on the other hand can't get the candy in his mouth fast enough. He doesn't always finish each piece because he is so excited to get another one in his mouth! It is too funny to see their very different personalities. It makes me very curious to see what number 3 will be like!

Disneyland Again!

So a few weeks ago we went to Disneyland again! We just can't keep away! It was fun to see it all decorated for Halloween. It was so crowded! We got there on Friday night and thought we would sneak in and maybe catch the fireworks but we couldn't get in because Disneyland park was full! I was shocked! I have been to Disneyland many times and I have never heard of them closing it because they were filled to capacity! Nuts! We just made sure we were there bright and early Saturday morning and it wasn't too bad. The boys didn't seem to mind the crowds. After every ride Brayden would get off and say, "That so fun Mom, I love that ride!"
One other funny thing that happened was we were getting on the Winnie the Pooh ride for the 3rd time (it was the only ride with no wait!) and the ride operator was going through her speech to pull down the bar as far as you can. Matthew stood up and said I can't pull on the bar because my mommy's tummy is too big and I can't pull it down. This girl started cracking up laughing along with Nate. It sure is nice to be reminded by your 4 year old that you are getting large.





Anyway here is my favorite picture from the trip:

This is the risk you take when you ask some random person to take a picture for you! Oh well, one day we will get a good family pic at Disneyland!

My housekeeper

He works for cookies, candy and tomatoes!

Seriously he switched the laundry for me with no help from me!

And he is a pretty good cook too!

1st day of his 2nd week of Preschool

So I couldn't for the life of me find our camera to take a picture of Matthew on his 1st day of the 1st week of preschool! Bummer! But here are some pictures from the second week!


I couldn't get him to just stand and smile he had to keep shouting, "Preschool!"


One of his many works of art.

And Matthew just being Matthew! I think that he likes preschool. Everyday when I pick him up and ask him how it went he says, "Sorry Mom I can't tell you!" Sometimes I can get him to tell me bits of pieces but he still wants to go every time so I take that as he likes it!

On the first day we were driving to drop him off and I was asking him if he was excited. He told me that the last time he didn't make any friends (the previous week there was an open house and he got to meet his teacher and classmates). My heart just about broke. I felt so bad for him and I felt really guilty leaving him there. But we talked about how to make friends by asking other kids to play. He thought about it and said, "Mom there was this one boy and he wasn't sharing. I am not going to ask him to be my friend!" He seems to be doing better and says that he plays with the other kids. I didn't think that it would be this hard to drop him off and walk away! I am not look forward to Kindergarten!

Here is our other crazy boy. He refuses to use any utensils but one morning he insisted on using a fork to eat his toast! Silly kid!

And here is what has been keeping Nate and I busy late at night! We canned about 40 jars of peaches! Whew! Now we have some pears, tomatoes, and some jam. I guess I know what we will be doing while watching conference!

Matthew's Joke

Matthew just told me a joke, "What is the oven doing in the fridge? It's in the butter!" And then he started cracking up laughing! Having a 4-year-old is fun, even if I don't get his jokes!

Kitchen Floor

I think he is a little tired!

Update

I am really bad at blogging lately! So here are some updates of what we have been up to:

In July we went to a Ahlstrom family reunion (Nate's side) in Morgan UT. It was totally beautiful up there!

Pretty, green mountains!

They had a portable audio system up there and of course Matthew was "helping" ok so he was just asking 20 questions of why and how everything worked! Poor Uncle Bruce!

Sweatshirts in July!!

Then in August we made another quick trip to Disneyland! This time Aunt Michelle and Aunt Carrie came along!

Aunt Michelle and Brayden

Aunt Carrie and Brayden (getting ice cream all over Aunt Carrie, this is how you know he loves you!)

Waiting in a long line at the end of a long, hot, muggy day. But this new ride was totally worth it! It was a Toy Story 4D ride where you get to play arcade games. Totally fun and worth the 40 minute wait! (That was about the longest line we stood in, not too bad for August at Disneyland!)

The whole crew with our favorite character, Lightening McQueen!

I think we are getting a little spoiled with our trips to Disneyland (adults included!). Gotta live it up now come April our passes expire and I think it will be time for a different, less expensive trip :)

Now we are back to normal everyday life! Matthew grows like a weed and is almost out of PJs. I had some coupons to Kohls so we went looking for PJs. Matthew loves Star Wars right now, so he insisted on getting these:

They only had 3 pairs left and the smallest pair was a size 8! He is growing like a weed but not that fast, these drown him. But he doesn't care and I am a cheap person and have a hard time paying 15 bucks for PJs so at least he will really get our moneys worth out of these for as long as he will be able to wear these!

This morning Matthew woke up at about 6 and I was tired so I laid back down for a "few minutes" when I got up again I found Matthew with make-up all over his face. When I asked him about it he told me that it was ok it was just girl stuff! He also ate a chocolate cupcake for breakfast! He is getting sneaky. Last night we were playing outside and he told me that he needed some water so I told him to go and get some. 15 minutes later I followed him inside to find him eating a chocolate cupcake, I started laughing and said "nice water break Matthew!" But he did get one out for me and for Brayden too. He figures that if he gets enough to share then it makes everything ok! One more story: I feel asleep again and woke up to find Matthew watching TV with my sewing basket in front of him. He had unloaded everything out of it. Pins and needles all over the floor and he had cut up all of my elastic into very small pieces. Oh and he had cut himself with the scissors. Yes, multiple violations of things he knows he should not be doing! I was pretty upset, hence there is no picture of this. So I sent him to timeout and then told him that he couldn't watch TV or play on my computer for the rest of the day. He then remembered that Star Wars was going to be on TV that night and he was crushed. He is getting pretty addicted to Star Wars, can you tell? Anyway, life is never dull and I am starting to worry about having 3 boys in the house, this could get pretty crazy!

Christmas in July and Wedding

So I bought some train tracks for Matthew for his birthday back in April but we ended up going to Disneyland. So I was going to try to save them for Christmas but Matthew found them and well that was the end of that. So once he finished his job chart we let him have it. Actually it has worked out great, since it has been so hot here he needed a new toy to play with! And he has been very entertained and not wanting to watch TV all day. I think this might become a new tradition, Christmas in July!

This past weekend Nate and I were able to go over to California for one of my really good friends from college's wedding. It was in Laguna Beach and it was beautiful. My wonderful sister came down from Utah to stay with the boys so we could go! It was wonderful!

The wedding wasn't until 6pm on Sunday so we went to Sacrament meeting and then went to walk around the Newport Beach temple. It is a really pretty temple.

The wedding was on a little cliff overlooking the ocean and the sun was setting. It was just so gorgeous!

Me, Tamara(the beautiful bride) and Dianna. It is hard to believe that we graduated from ASU 6 years ago! Time flys!

Lately I have been pretty tired from pregnancy, the heat and my back has been really hurting. So I tend to fall asleep rather quickly if I sit down or lay down with the heating pack on my back. The other day I was reading to the boys and then they started playing with their toys and the next thing I knew I was asleep on the couch. Nate came home and Matthew went downstairs and told him that he was cleaning up the toys upstairs (yeah right) but that he had to be quiet. Nate said, "Oh is Brayden asleep?" and Matthew said, "No, Mom is!" Oops! Anyway, so my poor kids have to fend for themselves sometimes, mostly just Matthew. So the other day I was resting my back and I totally feel asleep and I woke up and found Matthew on the couch like this! That is Nate's camping flashlight on his head and a movie was on!