Merry Christmas Nanna!

This was our gift to my Mom this year. The music and lyrics were written by an incredibly talented friend of mine. Once she'd written the song, she spent 3 hours with my kids recording it and then hours more editing it. Her talent is AMAZING. My kiddos can't really sing, but she has this method of getting things "just right." I added the pictures to the music for a slideshow. It is now my kids favorite song to listen to and I'm loving the memories. So is my Mom! If you are in So Cal & are interested in having one made let me know and I will put you in touch with my friend. Oh, and Samantha's last line is "I love you to the moon!"

Make a video - it's fun, easy and free!
www.onetruemedia.com

Valentine's Day 2011

New Year's Day

I forgot to mention it in the last post, but my brother Curtis and his family came up for New Year's eve and then stayed for a few days.  We hadn't seen them in over a year, so it was a really nice visit.  The boys enjoyed playing with their cousin Kayla who is about 1 1/2 years older than them (and who has twin boy cousins on her mom's side that are 1 1/2 years old than her...funny), and it was great to meet their adorable little baby, Chole who is about a month older than Samantha.

The highlight of New Year's day was making cookies with Nanna:

Notice Micah eating the dough in this picture (we didn't even realize he was doing that until a few minutes later)...yeah, he wasn't too into decorating the cookies...he just wanted to eat them.

And this is how we bribed the boys to get their pictures taken (we had a professional photographer come to the house on New Years):  Ice cream!  Yep, it was only 10:00 am, and my boys were eating ice cream! 

New Year's Eve

We had SO MUCH fun on New Year's eve!  First we had a dance party in the dark with lots of glowing jewlry and such.  They boys still talk about it.

Then, we set up the tents in the theater room and watched Cars, ate popcorn, and drank juice.  The boys were in heaven!  The idea was to have them fall asleep in their tents watching the movie.  I mean, it was late for them!  But no, they wouldn't have that!  The rest of the family left around 10:30, so we turned off the lights and snuggled with them while we finished the movie...

11:15....Movie over....still wide awake

more snuggling....tickling backs....singing Jesus songs....12:00 am....still awake

I finally left I was so frustrated, but Cory stayed in there with them all night.  They did eventually fall asleep, but I guess he says they woke up a bunch all night long.  Silly boys!

More between New Years & Christmas

I'm sure everyone but me is sick of hearing about our trip to Utah, but there are just so many fun pictures that I want to have in our book...anyway, it will just be this post and then one for New Years, and then I will be caught up and start posting more recent stuff.

The boys loved this table.  They thought it was just so great that they had their own table.

They had a lot more fun shoveling the snow than sledding in it.  Seriously, they thought that was great.  They stayed out there for almost an hour and were kicking and screaming when my parent finally brought them back in.  They didn't even have gloves or boots...just socks on their hands!

 

I'm not sure when all these pictures were taken, but they are cute, so we will just include them here.  The boy's loved this necklace (no matter how many times Cory asked them to take it off):

and they adored Christa:

They especially loved playing the "running game" with her.  They loved to run across the living room to the kitchen again and again the whole time we were there, but Samantha's room was directly under where they were running in the kitchen.  So, one night when Samantha was sleeping, Christa put herself right before the kitchen floor and had them run to her instead of the kitchen.  They loved it.  She was then obligated to play that game at least once an hour the rest of the time we were there:

Between Christmas and New Years...

The boys LOVED playing the "racing game" on the Wii with just about anyone. Basically you'd play and just give them an empty steering wheel and they were happy for hours. Needless to say, Cory was more than willing to take care of the boys that way! They even fell asleep a few times doing it, and considering how hard it is to get them to sleep lately, that was a big plus!


Speaking of sleep, here is a funny story:

After night after night of trying everything else, we finally decided to just let the boys cry it out. The first night, this is what we hear:

Both: Screaming at the top of their lungs with their little mouths right by the crack in the bottom of the door.
Noah: "Stop!" (they both stop crying) "Micah say Mommy, Noah say Daddy"
Micah: "Mommeeeee! I neeeeeeed you! Momeeeeee!....scream, scream, scream"
Noah (at the same time as Micah): "Daddeeeeeee. Help Pleeeease! scream, scream, scream"

When that didn't work, they switched:

Noah: "Ok, Micah say Daddy, Noah say Mommy. Loud!"
Micah: "Daddeeeeeeee. Waaaaaater. Daddeeeeeeee! Scream, scream, scream"
Noah (at the same time as Micah): "Mommeeeee! Jeeeeesus songs! Now! Scream, scream, scream."

How's that for manipulation? Yeah, so now we are pretty sure that letting them cry it out is the best option.

Samantha discovered that she has some pretty tasty toes while we were there:


We made some music:


and took a trip to Burger King:


Samantha just started learning how to army crawl (she is much better at it now). She would get up on her knees and then sort of throw herself forward and land on her belly making very slow progress across the room:


We played with the train multiple times EVERY day (it was for sure a favorite):

This game was another favorite, but has a funny story to go along with it as well. The basic idea of the game is to use the big giraffe to cover up whatever smaller animal the game says. So if it says "monkey," you put the giraffe on top of the monkey. Well, Noah picked up on it pretty quick and liked it, but Micah refused to play it correctly. He would put it on anything but the animal it wanted him to. This went on for days. We were pretty sure he knew how to play it, but was just being stubborn. Then one day, Cory and I were both sitting there with him while he played it when we realized he was playing it correctly. After about 5 or 6 min, I leaned over to Cory and quietly said: "What do you think made him decide to start playing it right?" Micah immediately stopped, looked up at us with a funny little smirk and started playing it incorrectly again. Funny boy.



They boys also loved playing this sleeping game with my mom. They would pretend to be asleep on her shoulder and then she would say "wake up!" or "Micah (or Noah) is awake!" and they would pop right up.


Okay, I'm done posting for today...more later. Man, we have way too many pictures from this trip!