It's been a while, so long spring is almost here.

Well, it's been quite a while since we've posted anything. Life has been busy, or tiring, but it moves right along. I can't believe we're into March already. I'm another year older and Tara will be on Saturday. And it got so warm today that we actually (well, I did) turned the air conditioner on upstairs. It was 78 degrees inside, even with the fans on, that's just too hot for me after all the cooler weather. It's supposed to cool down a bit this weekend, but only into the 50s, so that's not bad at all.

Things have been going well. Grace is getting so big. She's a great eater and we hope that lasts after having 3 picky eaters. She will eat just about anything and everything, fruit, vegetable, meat, bread and whatever she might find on the floor before we can get to it. Tonight she was eating ravioli that we had for dinner and Tara had given it to her on a little plastic plate and she was picking up the plate and licking it. It was too cute. We took some pictures and will maybe post some soon. She's starting to make more noises than just 'da-da' now, and maybe she'll actually say a real first word soon (Although I think that 'da-da' should count because she will say it when she sees me, but she also says it babbling all the time).

She's crawling everywhere, but mostly away from her siblings that think that she's their toy. Hallie gets a little playful with her and isn't careful sometimes. She loves Carter because he's pretty good with her except that he feels the need to always bring her to us, even if we just put her down to play. Jackson is just too rough with her so she doesn't like him too much right now and he tortures her a little bit. Soon he's going to pay for that.

Jackson will be 5 soon and just has a few months of pre-school left. Hard to believe, he was younger than Grace when we moved down to GA. He's so funny, polite and fun to be around when he's in a good mood, but can be a terror if he's not. When he's in a good mood though, and you have him alone, he will talk your ear off. The other day Tara came up stairs while I was working and Grace was napping, and just crossed her eyes at me and whispered that he'd been talking to her non-stop for an hour straight. Just as she's finishing here he comes mid-sentence and just keeps on going. He's quite the talker.

Carter and Hallie are doing well. Hallie had a little piano performance for another teacher recently and she did really well. I think she's starting to get much better. Soon I think she'll be able to move on to more difficult music if she'll try. I think she'd be surprised what she could play already if she gave it a shot. Carter is doing well in school and is just getting so big. If only we could get him to gain weight. He's growing up, but not gaining any weight, just getting skinnier. :-) He's as cute as ever and is getting more helpful and grown up.

Anyways, just thought I'd post a little something, but I've got to getting going now so that I can play volleyball tonight. I'll try to post a little more often, it's refreshing to just aimlessly write sometimes :-)

December 2008

Well December came and went with not much being posted; but a lot going on. Here are a few of the things that we did. At the beginning of the month (or maybe the end of November) we went to Publix to watch our niece singing Christmas carols with her chorus group. While we were there we saw Santa and ate lots of samples. Jackson was a little afraid of him and Grace wanted to pull his beard off. Carter was a little afraid too, but I think that was because he was not a very real looking Santa and Carter told me that sometimes Santa's helpers that played Santa in the store did not do it very well. Later in the month we went to the Ice Forum and went ice skating with Hallie's primary class. She had gone ice skating for the first time a few weeks before that at a friend's birthday party and loved it so she suggested that they do that for their class activity and everyone agreed. For someone that had only skated once before Hallie did really well. She went off and left Carter, Jackson and Mark to hug the wall for a while. Mark then picked it up pretty quickly and went to skate with her. Carter made it around the rink once and Jackson made it about half way around and then they were done. I then swapped Grace with Mark and went out. I was scarred to death of falling and breaking my tailbone again so I hugged the wall the whole time. It also did not help that a grown man went by me and said "if you are ever going to learn to skate you have to get off the wall!" Yikes, he was friendly. These pictures are not very good because of the glass enclosure that surrounds the rink.We then went to Grandma Connie and Grandaddy Tom's house with all their grandkids and decorated their Christmas tree. A few days later we made Christmas mice cookies. The kids had a lot of fun making these and they were very easy. Hallie and Carter made a lot of mice and Jackson ate a lot of mice.

The kids then opened their Christmas Eve jammies.

Here are the kids on Christmas morning, and each one with one of their favorite presents.

(I started this post on 1/8/09 and finally on 2/8/09 I finished it. Better late than never.)

Boys will be boys

Carter and Jackson sometimes amaze me. I think it is because as a girl I would never think to do the things that they do. A few examples of these are the kleenex and oatmeal episodes. I think they must have been missing the snow of Utah when they did these things because they said that they were "jumping" into snow and they were making snow "fall" after they made these messes. They decided to do both of these things within a week of each other.

This past week the boys decided do to get into things and make messes again. It started exactly one week ago tonight. Mark and the kids were upstairs in our room and I was downstairs in the kitchen. I heard Jackson cough and then cry out "I swallowed it". It was a steel ball that goes to Magnetix. The ball is about the size of a marble and there are little magnetic rods that they stick to and you can make cool things with them. We have told him not to put them in his mouth but he does anyway, because what do we know! Well I called the pediatrician and they said to take him down to the ER and have them take an xray to make sure it was not stuck in his throat; because his throat was hurting. Apparantly things like marbles and money can get stuck in your throat and you can still breath and everything. So I get ready to take him to the ER and Mark asks him "how many times have we told you not to put the balls in your mouth?" He replies "about 100". Exactly. About 100.

Here is a picture of his marble.

It finally made its grand re-entrance tonight! Thank goodness because I am sick of checking poop for a marble. I will spare you the details. But one funny thing that he said when we were sitting in the ER until midnight was "I'm glad I swallowed this marble because now I get to stay up and watch cartoons." I am thinking about contacting the ER and telling them to get rid of the tv's because Jackson thinks if he goes to the ER that it is fun because they let him stay up and watch tv and eat popsicles while he is there.

Then next thing the boys did is destroy their room last nightwhile they are suppose to be going to sleep. That is nothing new but this is how Mark found them.

Now would a girl ever say to herself "Oh, I think I want to take all my books off the bookshelf and sleep in it!" No, they would not. At least I wouldnt. But to Carter and Jackson it must have seemed like an interesting thing to do.

Like I said

Boys will be boys!

Christmas pictures

We went and got our family pictures taken today. It went pretty well. Mark usually hates doing this because it is a lot of drama trying to get everyone to smile and hold still at the same time so the last professional family picture we had taken was when Carter was a baby. But when we were done he said that is went quite well and we were happy with how they all turned out. We also got Hallie's 9 year and Jackson's 4 year old pictures taken (we had done Carter's earlier). Grace did not do as well as we had hoped that she would because she was tired and hungry. So there are not many pictures of her smiling; mostly just sucking her thumb. Here are some of our favorites.

Blogs and going private

Ok so we may be going private in the future. Mostly just because everyone is sending me these crazy emails about how your life might be destroyed because some psycho person took pictures of your kids off your blog and posted them all over youtube or something like that. Or how some ex boy/girl friend found your blog and shows up on your door step at 2 in the morning. You know how things get blown totally out of proportion in emails. Anyway. If you would like to continue to look at our blog; please send me your email at flytarafly@hotmail.com. I know, now that I put my email up here, you are all thinking that I am going to get tons of junk coming to my email. Probably so, but I can press delete really quickly.


Also, if you have a blog please send me a link to it. If you haven't noticed our Friends and Family section in missing. Somehow we lost all of the blogs that we look at when we were redoing our background.

So please send me your emails addresses and blogs.

Who is carrying you?

This is how Jackson came to me today. I did not take the picture at that time because I had to rush to get Grace before he dropped her. (For this picture I had him show me how he picked her up and then took the picture. And Hallie was standing there ready to catch her if he dropped her.) When Jackson brought her to me her arms were up around her head because she was slipping down as he walked. Later I let him drop a raw egg in the sink to show him what would happen if he dropped her. I dont know that it taught him anything other than throwing eggs in the sink and watching them crack is fun.

Happy 7th month birthday!

I meant to post this yesterday (the 25th) since that is really her birthday but didnt get to it, but I thought I would post it anyway.

Happy 7 months little Gracie. You are such a cutie pie and such a sweet baby. I cant believe you are already 7 months old. I love it when you bury your head in my shoulder and squeeze me back when I hug you. And how you kick your arms and legs like crazy when I come to get you out of your bed. And your sweet baby breath. And how you put your head on my shoulder and sleep after I feed you at 3 am.

Writing this makes me want to go wake her up and play with her. But I wont. Here are some pictures of the 7 month old little girl.

Is there anyone at home?

Well, I've been very quiet on the blogging front lately, but that isn't because life is boring. So I thought I'd at least get on and post a little something. I've been plenty busy at work lately. In what I do, we have up and down periods, usually every 2-3 monhts or so I might end up in between projects, but I've been busy for 2 months now and have work through the end of January, so that's very nice.

One of the big things going on for me lately is that I sprained my ankle really good playing volleyball about 5 weeks ago. I grazed someone's leg coming down at the net and rolled it all the way down. I've rolled my ankles (both) multiple times playing basketball, but this was a really good one. I was on crutches for close to a week, and now 5 weeks later, I'm still tender and maybe only about 70%. It's sucked, because I miss my volleyball, basketball and tennis. They're my get away. I thought I'd include a picture or two of my bruising and swelling from a couple days after the sprain, but I don't want to show off my hairy feet. :) I did swell halfway up my calf and down to my toes and bruised from above my ankle to my toes. The swelling had spread out nicely by then. About 3-4 hours after the sprain it was just like I'd hidden a softball in my ankle.

This past weekend, Tara and Grace and my sister in law went up to Nashville to a time-out for women and met my sisters there. They had a lot of fun, and me and the children went and spent the night Friday at Wes's house. We had a lot of fun there too. I brought my TV and Wii, so we had two TVs and two Wiis so we played lots of games and Wes and I watched Iron Man that night. We also went and bought Wii Music on Saturday, and it is quite a fun little game. There's a lot of different things you can do with it. We're learning that Carter has quite an ear for music has he plays a little music game called Pitch Perfect. He's really good at it.

Pearly Whites

Last week was the week of teeth. Grace got her first tooth; actually teeth. She got her 2 bottom teeth in one day. She had been waking up a lot in the middle of the night and I just could not figure out what her problem was. Then one morning she was chewing on my finger and there they were. It took a few more day and then they were completely out. Here is a picture of them.Then, a few days later Hallie FINALLY lost her snaggle tooth. Her front top tooth has been sticking out because her adult tooth was coming in behind her baby tooth. It looked horrible. I told her that if she did not get it out by Friday that I was taking her to the dentist to have them pull it. On Thursday night she was at soccer practice and a boy that was defending the goal kicked the ball and it hit her in the mouth! Knocked the tooth right out. I told her that she needed to thank him for saving her from having to go to the dentist and get it pulled.

Jackson Votes

Today after I picked Jackson up from preschool, we went to the grocery store. When we gott there he wanted to take his Weekly Reader that he got from school in the store with him so he could trace the letters. So we go in and go shopping and when we are waiting in line at the check out I started looking at his Weekly Reader. The cover of it has a little kid with a flag and it says Ready, Set, Vote! So I am look at his Weekly Reader and talking to him about it. On the inside of it there is a section that says "Who Will Be Our President?" and there are pictures of John McCain and Barach Obama out on the campaign trail talking to people. There is a little box on each one of the pictures and Jackson had colored in one of the boxes. The following is our conversation.

Me: What are these little boxes for?

J: We voted for the Prophet.

Me: Oh, you mean you the President.

J: Yeah, we voted for the President and he won. (pointing to McCain)

Me: Oh, why did you decide to vote for him?

J: Because he wears a tie!



In the pictures McCain is wearing a suit and tie and Obama is wearing a blue dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up and the top botton undone.



So there you go. Go out and vote and choose the one that wears the tie!

Grace's First Food

Grace had her first food this week, with some rice cereal. Here's a pretty good video.

Really Big Guy

On Sunday we went to a stake fireside with Coach Ingle and Shawn Bradley. Coach Ingle is a man that is in our ward that is the basketball coach for Kennesaw State Univerity here in Georgia; but coached at BYU when Shawn Bradley played there. It was a very good fireside. It was for the youth but everyone was invited; so we went. Shawn Bradley was a very good speaker. At the end he answered questions that the youth had. He is some interesting things about him. He is 7 feet 6 inches tall. He was only 19 inches when he was born; but 10 pounds. His wife is only 5 feet 4 inches tall. They have six kids. Since retiring from the NBA he now is the the athletic director and assistant principal for a school for troubled teens. Here are a few pictures of Shawn holding Grace; and with me and Mark.

Smile!

We had a family home evening on Smiles today (we're using the New Nursery Lesson Manual from Church, it's great!). We decided to let the kids show us their best smiles and take a picture and post it. These aren't really their best smiles, because they had to make some crazy faces too, of course. They're still really cute. You can see Hallie's snaggle tooth. I'm going to pull that thing in the middle of the night!

Hallie's birthday party

Last Friday we had Hallie’s birthday party. She was turning nine and wanted to have a sleep over, but we decided instead to have her friends over from 5-9 pm and wear their pjs and do fun things. They made their own little pizzas. (Which I forgot to take pictures of.)

Watched Camp Rock.

Played with Hallie’s hamster Jerry.

Painted nails.
Opened presents.

Decorated cupcakes.
And because we thought they had not made enough mess already. We had a fondue fountain to add to it.
And then after they were all good and sugared up; we waved good bye and sent them home to their parents to get them to calm down and go to bed.