Felt Tent

So I was recently inspired by one of our friends blogs (Missy and Lyndon to be precise) where she made a tent for her girls out of felt. I have long had a fascination with the little felt food I had seen on etsy and thought that the idea was great but I really didn't have the desire to actually make anything out of felt until I saw Missy's blog and the wonderful job she did. I looked online and found some ideas and this is what I came up with. I have been working on it for a while and just recently finished (for the most part) it. (I still have to make the corn to go on the stalk.)
Front door, mail box and bird feeder
The garden, with carrots, cabbage, soon to be corn, and flowers. All the pieces remove and that is the kids favorite thing about it.
Apple tree with basket, the apples are supposed to go in the basket when not on the tree, but they usually end up as ammo for the boys to throw at each other.
The fish pond, the fish have paper clips in the mouths so the boys can use their magnetic fishing rod to catch them.
The boys enjoying one of the windows, as you can see the flowers didn't stay in the flower box either.

This was a fun project but I am glad it is almost completed, it took a lot of figuring out. And don't look too close because I made a lot of mistakes, but the kids don't seem to care.

Relaxing Saturday Morning

Alan has been pretty busy with school, his thesis paper, different conferences, looking for jobs, making posters, giving talks etc. that we don't have a lot of family time. But last Saturday Alan took part of the morning off from his usual work to just hang out with the boys and they loved it. Here are the boys in their pjs reading the Very Hungry Caterpillar.

Alan built the boys this marble ramp thing we saw in a Family Fun magazine. It didn't really work but they had fun making it. And we are still having "fun" picking up all the marbles that can be found in every crevice of the house. It's a good thing that there are not any little ones about yet to eat them.

It's Baa-aak!

Since I have lived away from Michigan for pretty much the last 12 years of my life I thought that I had lost most signs of my Michigan accent. I know sometimes when I am excited or talking too fast little hints of my accent come out. I can hear myself speaking like that sometimes and have to stop and correct myself. Especially on words like back or bag which I tend to say with a long a at times. Alan occasionally will catch me too and will laugh a little because he knows that it annoys me. Well apparently I must speak this way much more than I think I do because recently I have noticed my son Samuel speaking with the same long a on the same words I tend to say in my accent. I have to admit it grates on my nerves a little.

Anyway, I would like to hear from all of you Michiganians who have lived away from Michigan to see if their kids do the same thing. I would especially like to hear from all my sister in laws (because I doubt my brothers would actually write anything on here) to see if their kids have picked it up too.

Let me know!

S'more fun

Our little Jacob is such a funny kid. He loves to watch commercials on tv, well both he and Sam do really, but especially Jacob. They always ask me if we need to buy the stuff they see being sold on the infomercial type shows or tell me we need to get a snuggie or other new fangled gadget. But on Sunday his little obsession really showed its colors. We give our kids a little bag of snacks on Sundays during sacrament meeting if they have been good until after the sacrament. Alan gave Jacob some teddy grahams, some wheat thins, and a couple of little marshmallows in his bag. Jacob preceded to take out the teddy grahams and put a marshmallow inside of them and eat it like a s'more. I was very amused and he kept doing this throughout the meeting with his wheat thins too. I wondered where he got the idea to do that, but really didn't think too much of it because we had had s'mores before. But this morning we were watching some program on tv while the boys were eating lunch and Jacob yelled at me to look at the tv. I looked and saw an advertisement for this:

It is a microwavable s'more maker. He kept telling me that is why he made the "marshmallow cookies" that he had made in church because he wanted one of these. I had to laugh, it was pretty ingenious of a 3 1/2 year old to put all that together, at least I think it is.

Anyway, this past week the boys had a lot of fun going to BYU games (the BYU baseball game vs. Baylor and the BYU basketball game vs. TCU in Fort Worth), and they also got to go to the zoo, it was finally warm enough to go outside.
Jacob wanted to show his stuffed animal (a leopard named Jack) the real "leopard" (really a jaguar, but we told him it was a leopard because of his stuffed animal). So he brought Jack along to see him. Sam also brought his bear to show the bear at the zoo too, but I couldn't get a good picture of them together. The Jaguar was really active that day and was close to the glass, the boys were a little nervous about that but we got some good pictures of them with it.


Here the boys are at the new orangutan section of the zoo, they love jumping on the chimes and swinging on the ropes, they seemed more interested in that than they did with the orangutans which were also out and about, we hardly ever see them moving around. The lions were in good form too, we saw them roar which is something we have only heard from far away before, it was awesome to see it up close.

First Baseball Game

Last night we went to the boys first baseball game, Baylor was playing BYU and so we had to go out and support our cougs and the bears too. Sammy decided he was rooting for the cougars and Jacob wanted to root for the bears. I totally forgot the camera but our friend Hallie took some pictures of us at the game. Thanks Hallie.


Sic 'em bears!

The boys had a lot of fun until the last hour or so when their tiredness overran the funness factor. BYU won 7 -5 but it was a little hairy there at the end when Baylor made a run for the win.

Winter Wonderland

We got about 3-4 inches of snow here on Tuesday and the kids were so excited. We have had snow a couple of times this winter (very odd for central Texas) but nothing like this. The kids couldn't wait until there was enough snow outside to play in it, but once there was and I let them out to play they didn't want to stop. They have been asking for snow and have wanted us to visit their grandparents in Utah to play in the snow. When Sam saw outside that it was snowing he jumped up and down yelling "Mom it does snow in Texas."

The boys went out twice during the day for a very long time each time and then out with Dad again when he got home. They made this snowman together ( I made one earlier for them but they just knocked that one down.)
The boys throwing snow at Dad. This was their favorite thing to do, they kept throwing snow at everyone and everything they saw, they couldn't get enough throwing. Well, that is until Sam got snow down his back which he didn't like at all and started to cry, he got over it and kept playing.

The boys wanted to go out in the snow again today but the snow was basically ice and it wasn't much fun to play with. Now the snow is pretty much gone, it was short lived but the boys had a blast.

I thought I would also include a pregnancy picture for those who don't see me too often, I never documented how big I was getting with my first pregnancy so I guess this is a good thing to do. I feel a lot smaller this time around, I am about 27 weeks in this picture.
The boys have also really enjoyed watching the Olympics. Their favorites so far have been speed skating, ski jumping, and the bobsled. We have been cheering on the US and Finland of course. We were watching the team nordic combined when Finland was winning so we pulled out our flags and our laplander hats and cheered until they sadly lost. Oh well, it was fun watching the boys run around yelling "Go Finland!"

Better LateThan Never

So I haven't blogged in almost 2 months and I was procrastinating and procrastinating, so I am now just posting things that I should have posted a long time ago. We had Christmas, my birthday, and a party for a friend of ours, my Grandmother Montierth came for a visit, our boys got sick, they got better, and then got sick again, and then got better again, our baby continues to grow every day and Alan has continued to look for employment when he is done with school this spring. So that is pretty much the update of our lives over the past couple of months, I hope I will be better about blogging and keeping you all updated.

30!?!?

So I have to say I had serious doubts about turning 30, it isn't like turning 30 makes you suddenly old or anything, but for some reason I was really dreading it. I have to admit I moped around a little every time anyone mentioned it (ie: Alan).
Alan asked me what I wanted to do for my birthday and we decided we would go out to lunch while our wonderful friends Hallie and Jason watched our kids and then we would go out and buy me some new shoes which I desperately needed. The morning of my birthday I awoke late to a semi clean house and Alan making a chocolate cake. Then I was showered with gifts from Alan and the boys, (Alan went a little overboard this year on the gifts.)
Alan continued to clean up the house and we relaxed a bit until our friends came to watch the boys. Our lunch was wonderful (Chuy's is pretty good food, a little crowded, but good.) I actually found some shoes I liked and then Alan kept telling me we should go walk around the mall for a bit. I didn't understand why he would ever suggest that since he HATES the mall. I told him I would rather go to another store and get some stuff I needed since we were close by.
We got home and there Hallie was grabbing the stuff from my arms as soon as I walked in the door and then a bunch of wonderful friends jumped out and yelled "Surprise!!!"
I was completely surprised too, I had no idea. I thought Hallie had planned this whole thing, but she didn't know any of these friends so I was really confused until someone said Alan had planned it all. He was so sweet to do that, and everyone was so nice to participate in my birthday festivities. It was fun to talk to everyone and Alan did a great job on the cake.

Christmas

This year for Christmas Moma and Papa came to visit from Utah. We had a lot of fun with them and were sad to see them go.

The boys in their new Christmas jammies and robes on Christmas Eve.

The boys with some of their loot.
We had some friends over on Christmas Eve and on Christmas, here the boys are hanging out with Hallie and Jason (our friends from Baylor) and Jason putting together some train stuff they got for the boys. They love Hallie and Jason.


Alan and Sam on Christmas morning.
Here the boys are a couple of days after Christmas with their friend Brylee making a gingerbread Christmas tree.

And the verdict is...

I guess it is kind of fitting that this being our 100th post we get to announce that we are going to be having another boy. We had an ultrasound this afternoon and as soon as the technician got a good view of the baby I looked and said "that there, that means it is a boy, right?" She said "yes, it looks that way." He was definitely not shy, and we got a great video of him taking some nice big gulps of the amniotic fluid, the technician kept saying "yum, yum." And then we got a view of him with the umbilical cord in his mouth. I guess he is practicing for eating on the outside.

Anyway, we are excited for this little one to come.

JUMP!

As you can see we have been celebrating around here. Alan finished another semester and we are excited for his last semester of school (cross your fingers).



The boys had a great preschool activity last week and got to dress as pirates and go look for the true meaning of Christmas. They had a blast.

We set up our Christmas tree.
And believe it or not, it snowed here for about 30 minutes one day and here are the boys enjoying the little snow that fell. If you look closely at the second picture you can see a little snow piled up against the fence.

We took a ride on Cinderella's carriage as we celebrated with the season at a Baylor tree lighting ceremony where no trees were actually lit.

You May Have Noticed

That we changed the title of our blog page. Before it just said Alan, Minda, Samuel, and Jacob. Not only was this a really boring name it was also a bit inaccurate. We are adding another member to our family sometime in the end of May. Yes, that means we are pregnant. Almost 15 weeks now.

Many of you may already know this but we thought we would let the rest of you in on the little secret. For those of you who would like to tease us about having another set of twins let me put your minds to ease, it is only one this time around (I made the ultrasound technician check multiple times to make sure.)

We are extremely excited about the baby and maybe a little nervous about the timing. Alan graduates from school in the middle of May and the baby's due date is May 28th so it cuts things awful close. But we are looking forward to the adventure.

The boys are very excited and love to talk to the baby, it is very sweet. We will see how sweet they are when they realize what it means to bring a new baby home.

The new name I picked for our blog is not really all that exciting either so if any of you have any really great ideas for a new name leave me a comment on what you think it should be.

Silly Pictures and Heritage Family Farm

The boys are so ready for Christmas. They have been asking when Christmas will be here since before Halloween. We decorated for Christmas while Alan was out finding deals early on black Friday. The boys found these hats and have been walking around only answering to the name Santa Claus and they love it.
The other day Sam was having a hard time napping and he decided he would sit by his door against his dresser and wait until I let him come out of his room. Well I guess he fell asleep there as he waited because when I went to get him he was really out of it. I picked him up and carried him to the couch and he fell asleep on the couch. I came back a little while later to check on him and I found him totally asleep standing like this against the couch. We have never really ever had a good sleeping picture of the boys so this was a first for us.

Alan got out some old rubber boots he has so he could have dry feet as he went out to do field work. The boys thought they were really cool and have been wearing them all around the house. Here is Jacob sporting the boots.So our boys are deathly afraid of dogs but we took them to the Heritage Family Farm last Friday and they fell in love with this puppy (thanks to Hallie for the help with the puppy.) The farm was a lot of fun we got to see how to make yarn and fabric, we learned about making cheese, saw a demonstration on how to make cider, saw how to do some blacksmithing etc. The boys really loved the petting zoo the best though. Sam was so cute he kept kissing the dogs nose. (This dog was so sleepy it almost looked dead but it was breathing so we knew it wasn't.)
Sam sitting on a bale of hay.
Jacob and Daddy on a bale of hay.

Making Spirits Bright

My kids surprise me everyday with something they pick up from who knows where. The other day I was utterly confused though when Jacob came to me and said "Mom what are spirits?" I thought wow that is a hard one to explain. And so I tried to explain to him in the most simplest terms what I thought to be an acceptable answer. He looked very confused and looked at me like I was from outer space. I wondered where he had learned that word and I asked him and he said. "Mom spirits are bright." I was really confused about how he would have come up with that on his own. So I asked him what he meant. He said "Jingle Bells, making spirits bright."

When I realized what he was talking about I just had to laugh at myself for confusing him so much. It was a pretty simple question actually that he had asked. Oh well I guess I better learn to do some investigating as to what he is really asking next time.

New Couches

We got a call earlier this week from a family in our ward who were getting new couches and wanted to know if we wanted their old couches. Since our couches didn't match and the "new" couches were in much better shape then our own we took them up on their offer.
There are a lot of pillows and the boys have discovered how much they love playing and hiding in all the pillows. Here is a picture of them playing in the "forest"(that is what they call the pillow fortress they make for themselves.)

I thought this was a funny way to watch tv, but they love to sit here and watch tv like this.