top ten

I thought I would write about my kids' top ten favorite things/things to do. This is probably just as much (or more) for me than it is for you. But enjoy:

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Baby Ethan:

10. pretending he can't sit up on his own...we know he can; he just won't!

9. car rides...they still put him fast to sleep.

8. mornings...he is always smiling when I go in to get him.

7. breakfast, lunch and dinner...he gobbles them up! We even made up a silly song about how much he eats. It goes:

He eats when he's happy,
he eats when he's sad...
and when he's not eating, he gets really really mad.
So we feed him when he's happy;
we feed him when he's sad;
we feed him when he's really really really really mad!

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6. sucking on things...toys, fingers, his toes, our toes (we don't let him, although he's tried), mommy's necklaces, etc.

5. snuggle time in the morning with Daddy, while Mommy races off to work.

4. Momm'ys hair...he loves how it tickles his face. He gets so excited.

3. the Jumperoo...he loves to jump!

2. peek-a-boo...what baby doesn't love that game?

1. Cassidy...he loves his sister the most; she can make him laugh so hard!

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Princess Cassidy:

10. singing silly songs all day (see example above)

9. teasing her baby brother

8. going to Elizabeth's house (her sitter)

7. going pee in potty while we are out and about (and while the cart is full to the top)

6. her "princess movie" (Enchanted)

5. riding her little pink "bike"...she needs a new one; she has totally outgrown that push bike.

4. shopping...go figure

3. playing with friends or cousins

2. her princess dresses

1. dance class...she will do ANYTHING to get to go to dance class!

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Baby Ethan recently started growling the word, "dadadada". Last week Cassidy said, "Baby, say 'dada'," to which he replied, "dadadada." Cassidy then said, "Good job. Say 'Elizabeth'."

La famille

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Voila les photos!

I have not put many pictures on here recently, so here they all are. Enjoy!

This was at the TreeHouse Museum like two months ago. SO FUN! I HIGHLY recommend it.

There are tons of houses and "countries" to visit there, and lots of dress-ups.
Joel had fun building a tower. He's just a big kid at heart!
Cassidy was very excited about the idea of destroying the tower! This is it half-destroyed.

We had fun making up silly plays.

When Baby Ethan figured out how to jump in his Jumperoo a month ago, suddenly, he was a much happier baby! He LOVES his Jumperoo.

Cassidy started dance class and LOVES it. It is the highlight of her week!

Cassidy tried on Baby Ethan's "pea in a pod" halloween costume.

I thought it was pretty funny.

Hiking last month in Ogden

The kids love hiking.

Mommy was not careful when opening the door to JCPenney and it went right over Cassidy's foot. She had to get four stitches. Bad mommy! Cassidy was screaming while they were stitching her, and I said, "Isn't it numb?" They said, "Yah, she's just mad we are holding her down." Poor thing. But she LOVES telling the story of how mommy gave her owies.

Baby Ethan was the inspiration for this post, as today is his seven month birthday! Whoa, he is an old man! Time goes too quickly. Isn't he SO cute? We just adore him.

Happy birthday, bubbies!

Cheer up, baby

So this afternoon Baby Ethan was being very grumpy. I was trying to make treats in the kitchen for Joel's birthday and Ethan was in the high chair fussing. Suddenly I noticed that the crying had stopped. I looked over and Cassidy had taken things into her own hands. This is what I saw:

Baby Ethan was covered in Cinderella dolls. Nice, Cass!

p.s. Happy birthday, Hunny. I love you!

I started teaching

So I never get around to blogging. I often think of it, but then I decide that I must have some new adorable photos to upload before I post. Once I have the photos to post, though, I remember what a pain it is to upload the pictures from the camera to the computer, and then from the computer to the blog. Plus, for some reason, I have a hard time putting them where I want them in the post (I'm not so computer-savvy). The point? I am realizing that I can blog without pictures. It's a lot faster.
School has started, and I am teaching French at the Jr. High in the mornings. I have two French 1 classes and one French 2/3 split class. The French 1 classes are a blast. The seventh-graders are so wonderful. They come in, sit down, then say, "Bonjour, Madame." They even raise their hands and volunteer. It's like an old movie. My French 2/3 split class, on the other hand...is a work in progress. It is difficult to deliver content to both French classes, and keep them working and quiet all at the same time. But we do have fun in there, though.
Also, the homework and lesson planning is stacking up. Blah. I just work half-time, and so I try and keep it that way. By that, I mean that when I come home at noon, I want to be with my kids, not planning lessons. So I do a lot of late-night correcting of homework and lesson planning (once the kids are in bed). I keep thinking I will get ahead someday, but right now it's all I can do to keep my head afloat.
As for the kids, that is another story. Baby Ethan took a few weeks to get used to the whole bottle thing, but he is taking them like a champ now (not formula, though. He won't even taste it. Boo.) Cassidy did great the first few days of my teaching. But now each morning she says, "I come too! I come too!" She is so sad that Mommy has to go away to work. This morning, I called as I was in the car and Cassidy got on the phone. She said, "yay, a Mommy come home?" because I usually call her on my way home. I had to explain that I was just leaving for work, and would be home later. Poor thing. She is way sad when I am home, and very clingy. Today she peed her pants twice, and pooped in her panties. So frustrating! We were so close.
Speaking of, she's crying right now. Off I go. More to come...

Hooray for the magic eraser!

Cassidy got me so angry this afternoon. She had been sitting at the table eating her lunch, and I had long-since finished mine, since she eats SO SLOW. I wasn't keeping that great of an eye on her, I guess, because I looked over and she had a sharpie and had drawn all over her hands, face, hair and our table! I was upset, but I was also worried about what Joel would think! This is our new counter-height table (that we got for a steal at the clearance center, by the way.) Anyway, I was freaking out and running in circles not knowing what to do. I hurried and googled how to get rid of permanent marker, and all sorts of crazy recipes came up. Then I had such a "duh" moment. We still had a magic eraser in our cleaning supplies. Tada. I was slightly worried to use it on wood, but it worked fantastically. Hooray! Why do I always forget what a wonderful thing the magic eraser is? Now as far as Cassidy's concerned...she still has marker all over her. Somehow, I just don't trust the chemicals in the magic eraser to use it on her, so her marker stains will just have to wear off:

Can you see the marker in her hair? It is even worse on her scalp! So naughty.

Last week we went to Lagoon with my sister and her family. It was a lot of fun. Cassidy was pretty brave and even did the egg drop (a smaller version of the Rocket) and RattleSnake Rapids. She loved the new OdySea ride. She even took a nap at Lagoon-a-Beach. Go figure. It was a fun day. Cassidy was too excited to wait for her own car and hopped into this one with this stranger! It was so funny.It was hard for Baby Ethan to sleep in the stroller, since it was such a HOT day.

Our house has a random little nook next to our bedroom. I think it's where they should have put the linens closet, but were too cheap to do it. So it's just empty space. When we moved in I joked that we should make it into a cute little kid play area and put up a door. Well, that's just what we did. We surprised Cassidy the morning of her birthday and had all her presents in there. We recorded the whole thing and were so excited to see her reaction. Well, she went straight through the door and to the presents. She didn't care about the little house. But once the presents were all opened, she got excited about her new house:

Baby Ethan is the only one who fits under the door.

Then we went to This is the Place Heritage Park with my dad. It was SO much fun! I had no idea that place could be so fun. Cassidy got to ride a train around the pond, play in little tiny play cabins, do arts and crafts, pet the animals at the petting zoo and even ride a pony. She loved it.

The sheep and goat were more interested in Baby Ethan than Cassidy.


Cassidy even made friends with a little Mormon Pioneer. We then came home, took naps (the kids), baked cupcakes, then hurried and cleaned the house. Then our friends came over from our previous neighborhood for dinner. Cassidy was too tired and grumpy to have a great time, though. Oh well. All in all, it was a good, fun, busy day.

Home Sweet Home

This post has been a long-time coming. But we are now in our home! Thank you to those of you who helped us with the move. We love it here. The house is so cute and we have already met some fun neighbors. I was all excited to post some pictures of the outside of the house, but some of you (who will remain unnamed) have recently advised against including location, pictures of your house, and other info on public blogs. Good advice, but it makes me sad, because our little home is so cute! So here are some pictures of the inside of the home:

Cassidy's room is all pink, of course!

Okay; you know Ethan's room is small, since I can't get his crib and his wall decor in the same shot. But I love this little nursery! I can now rock and sing baby Ethan to sleep without disturbing Cassidy.

I love the deck; but it's hard to use since we don't have patio furniture yet.

I now have an entire room for my scrapbooking! And the piano. I still plan to take lessons...

This is our tiny "media room". It can only be set up like this. There is not enough room to set it up any other way. I still like it. Since it is downstairs, it helps me not watch so much t.v. Oh yah, and the fact that we get no channels here helps with that, too.

I LOVE my dining room.

master bath

I put those shelves together myself!

kid bath

Well, that was the tour. It's probably not as exciting to you as it is to us. We have lived in some great apartments, but this is our HOME and we love it!

All this talk of how wonderful our new home is has really skimmed over all the trouble that has befallen us lately. For starters, this house is 3 stories tall (a lovely townhome trait) and so moving in was a doozey. We almost died. Then Cindy forgot to turn on the water. So we went all weekend long without water until Monday when the city came to turn it on. It felt like we were camping. This is not to mention feeling like we've lost everything in boxes...I still haven't seen any of Cassidy's or Ethan's bibs. A very messy ordeal. Plus the added expenses of everything we didn't think of that we needed to pay for or buy, i.e. the $65 connection fee just for water, a new lawn mower, internet receiver thingies, shelves for our tiny bathrooms, a ceiling fan for our ridiculously overheated bedroom on the third floor...the list goes on.

So things had finally started looking up. We weren't "camping" anymore, I knew where enough things were that I could actually get ready for the day, we had fun plans for my birthday the next day; everything was great. Too great, apparently, because the evening before my birthday I got in a wreck. I rear-ended my neighbor. Whoops. I told her she looked familiar, and she said she lived in my complex. We had a good laugh, and are now friends. So I guess that turned out not to be such a bad thing.

Whoa, that was a long post.