February--Short and Sweet

A lot happened this month, but not many pictures were taken compared to my normal amount. So this is what you get. :)

We celebrated Jason's birthday popper gun style. We let Ethan and Lydia help find his gift with a treasure hunt. Both Jason and Ethan love having popper gun battles so it adds an element of fun to our otherwise normal and sometimes boring daily life. ;)

Valentines Day followed and we celebrated with pizza and chocolates. Very romantic, I know.

But of course the most pictures this month were of Lydia who turned 2. She is so fun to have in our family. According to her 2-year-old Well Check she weighs 23 lbs 13 oz (15%tile) and measures 33 inches (30%tile.) She may be little, but she sure packs in a lot of playfulness and expressiveness. She enjoys trying to make others smile, and gives the cutest eye rolls until you smile and laugh. I also love her cheesy grins where she closes her eyes for added effect. She eats and sleeps well in spite of her allergy to eggs and intolerance to milk and peppers. I recently reintroduced eggs to see how she was doing and she gave a pretty good reaction so we'll have to continue to avoid eggs for the time being. She likes to play with dolls and stuffed animals, put together puzzles, dance, and copy Ethan in any way she can. She gives the sweetest hugs and kisses. It's kind of funny when Ethan gets hurts and starts crying so Lydia rushes over to give him hugs. Ethan is usually grumpy after he gets hurt and won't let Lydia give him hugs, so Lydia then becomes unhappy that Ethan is denying her hugs and starts trying to hit Ethan. From hugging to hitting in 30 seconds, she is funny to watch! She is talking much more now and will just jabber on with her words and phrases. It is cute to hear her start learning to pray by copying word for word what we say. She has to have her Lamb and pacifier to calm down and is currently really scared and anxious about getting a bath and anything related to her new froggy potty chair. Hopefully we'll work through those issues sooner rather than later because bath time is a very traumatic event these days.

 On Lydia's birthday we went to an indoor play place in Cincinnati called Pogo Play. Both Ethan and Lydia had a lot of fun there. After a morning of playing plus a nap, Lydia opened her birthday presents. Ethan of course was even more anxious than Lydia about opening and playing with her new toys. :)

I'm so glad Jason is willing to play and have fun with Ethan and Lydia. He is such a great dad!

 We got her a little Strider to ride. She a little young for it still, but hopefully she can use it this summer when it's warm.

That night we celebrated the Chinese New Year by eating a lot of authentic Korean food with our friends, the Bjarnsons. We miss living closer to them. We enjoyed the yummy food and fun company!

Later in the month we were also treated to a nice restaurant on a date night with the Huxels. Again we ate yummy food and enjoyed the company....as well as the chance to eat and talk without our children this time. Yay for friends!

January 2018

You would think this post would be about March or February, but we're a little behind over here. :)

We welcomed in the new year by trying out a local gym that had a racquetball court. Jason and I love to play racquetball, but unfortunately we seem to be some of the only ones. This is the only court in this area and there is only 1 court! Pretty crazy after you've seen the line of courts at the BYU Richards Building and had a hard time reserving one.

Future racquetball players

Life is so unfair!

Lydia loves trying to put her own clothes on now. I often find her in the morning with her pajamas already taken off.

Ethan loves playing with the magnet tiles he got for Christmas!!

Ethan had an awesome day at the mall in January. Because we were with friends he got to do lots of things he typically doesn't get to do and he kept saying "this must be my lucky day!" It started with a MOMS club activity with Auntie Anne's pretzels. A man talked about the history of pretzels and showed how to make them and let the kids play with some dough and practice making their own, and then we got to eat some and they were yummy!! They also let us ride the carousel in the Food Court. The cool thing about this carousel is that it has two levels and of course Ethan wanted to ride on the top!

After that, Ethan's friend Claire also got to ride these motorized animals and Ethan got a turn too. Claire could hardly steer the animal but Ethan rode it like a pro. :)

All dressed up for the first big snow storm. Lydia lasted about 5 minutes. :)

Ethan's first time roller skating at GV's birthday party. He couldn't go 5 feet without hanging on my arm, but he was determined!

Ethan came home from the neighbors looking like "a robot"

Building his own train tracks

A day warm enough for a little frisbee.

We celebrated my birthday by going to an Escape Room with friends. You are put in a room for an hour and have to solve several puzzles to get the door unlocked in time. It was my first time and I really enjoyed it.

Afterwards we ate appetizers and cheesecake

On my actual birthday I had a couple friends stop by with flowers and a cake. The flowers were beautiful and the Raspberry Lemon cake was out of this world! Super delicious!! Jason gave me a really nice necklace that I liked too. And Ethan gave me a Twix candybar for my birthday to replace the one he ate from my church bag that I got at church a couple weeks earlier. :)

A Taste of the Christmas Season

We love Christmas around here, and fortunately we got to celebrate a lot of it with Grandma and Grandpa Burningham in Nevada. Here is a quick review of some Christmas pictures and activities.

Family pic taken at our house in Kentucky

I love Lydia's cute cheesy grins. :)

One Sunday we were invited to a friend's house for dinner and cookie decorating. Ethan loved it!

Ethan was Joseph in his preschool's rendition of the Christmas Story.

Ethan was "Joseph" in his preschool's short rendition of the Christmas Story. He was excited about that because his middle name is Joseph. They sang a few cute Christmas songs with actions including "Reindeer Pokey," "God is Good," and a song about the animals in the stable where Jesus was born. Parents were invited for the program and Jason came home from work early so he could see it. Ethan was really animated and knew all the words. So cute!

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My two shopping buddies! You can be assured that this arrangement didn't last long. ;)

Fun play date to Totter's Otterville

Jason and I went to his Christmas work party at a nice venue at Devou Park. They had a very nice dinner and dancing.

Fun night at the Creation Museum outdoor live nativity with the Huxel's. It wasn't too cold and the lights were beautiful!

Lydia's first haircut. I never got a good after picture so you'll just have to see the pics below. :)

We left on Dec. 20 to fly to Grandma and Grandpa Burningham's. In spite of sitting at the gateway for an extra hour because of complications, the kids still did ok on the 4 hour flight!

Grandma and Grandpa, here we come!

Grandma and Grandpa's house near beautiful Lake Mead!

Ethan was very excited to show Grandpa all the cool things he saw at Shark's Reef Aquarium.

Ethan said his favorite thing was watching the sharks in the sunken ship.

Chelsey, Mik, and Samara had been living with Grandma and Grandpa for about the last 8 months but Mike flew in, they bought a Pilot, packed up the car, and drove to Utah the day after that. Fortunately we got to do a few early Christmas Eve activities with them including playing the pipe chimes, seeing the lights, and going caroling.

An amazing house of lights in Boulder City. We actually parked and walked around it. Pretty amazing!!

These birthday twins had fun hanging out together for a few days.

Getting some dance action in. :)

Taking a walk to a nearby park and seeing the Big Horn Sheep that live there too

We ate dinner at Macaroni Grill one night and Ethan and Lydia loved getting up and dancing to the music they had playing. The poor servers had to keep dodging this dancing duo. :)

Ethan loved playing with Grandma's marble track toy. He went from building big, but useless, tracks to figuring out how the marbles went and designing some pretty cool tracks.

New Christmas Coat

Christmas Eve

We attended church with Grandma and Grandpa on Christmas Eve afternoon. They had a very nice program with lots of musical numbers.

Christmas morning we started opening presents at 7:00am. The kids had been up since 6:00 but we tried to delay it a little. As soon as they saw their Santa gifts they were happy and content to play with them for the next hour and a half while we made the traditional Christmas Breakfast with saffrons brod. After we finished eating and cleaned up we got back to the business of opening the rest of the presents. :)

Lydia got a new doll with pacifier and bottle for Christmas. Grandpa is reading the little book that goes with it. Lydia loves babies and carried her new "baby" around all morning.

Christmas morning Santa brought Ethan a remote control car that kept him happy and busy all day!

Grandma opened the family birthday calendar we made for her and Grandpa for Christmas.

We fed the fish down at the docks one afternoon. They are always hungry! Ethan loved just throwing rocks in the lake.

We also had fun one afternoon jumping on the big trampoline outside. It wasn't every warm enough to swim in their pool, but hopefully we'll be back soon to try it out. :)

Not pictured are all the wonderful meals and the times after the kids were in bed that we got to play games and watch movies. Jason and I watched three movies during the week we were there. I think that could be a record for us since we've been married. We got away on a date to see the new Star Wars movie in the theater which was a lot of fun. We also served in the temple one morning with Jason's parents. The Las Vegas Temple is beautiful and it was nice to be there with family doing the work for extended family! It was a beautiful Christmas and I'm grateful that we got to spend it with family!