What we've been up to

Well, I just realized it has been a while since I blogged, I guess I am not good at keeping up with this. Here are some things we have been doing. Alan attended a conference in Houston where he was able to have some interviews for internships, which was exciting. The boys have finally felt better after a bought with fever which kept them sick over conference and into the week. I have been busily working on getting the boys Halloween outfits finished (finally finished today, hooray) and getting the house in order for Moma and Papa's visit (the boys are very excited.) Other than that, we have gone to the zoo, to the children's museum, and to a local outlet mall where I got a bunch of clothes for the boys for next year for $1.59 a pop, I was so excited.


Here are some pictures of some things going on in our lives:

The boys are sitting at the table now, no more highchair trays for them. However, every morning the local farms' roosters and hens go out and about into the neighborhood crowing and scaring our boys, this generally happens while they are eating breakfast. I usually can mask the sound with tv news or music, but usually once during the morning the roosters crow right next to the window the boys eat breakfast at, here are the boys hapily eating without any roosters in sight. Every morning we wake up to the boys saying, "no hear rooster in the morning." They hate their morning wake up call, but, they do love to watch them.

The boys all ready to go before our early morning walk. Every morning the boys and I meet up with the local ladies on the block to walk around the block. We have up to seven ladies and their kids, it is a lot of fun.

Samuel and Jacob love laundry day. They love helping mommy do laundry, but they especially love to play with the laundry baskets which are finally empty on laundry day.
One of the boys favorite things to do is to make towers and to build houses with their blocks. Here are the boys in action.


Like I mentioned earlier I have been busy making Halloween costumes for the boys, they are going to be dinosaurs, here are the boys trying their costumes out.

I don't have a lot of pictures of myself with my boys, so I made Alan take this one so that I could let them know that yes I really was around when they were little.
For Family Home Evening this week we had a lesson on good things and bad things that make us happy or sad, I used this apple tree Moma made us (thank you Mom) to show how we can be good apples. The boys loved it and were so excited to pick apples and to have a turn.
Because Alan was home a lot this week we ended up having a lot of down time, and so the boys sometimes didn't get dressed until later in the day, here are the boys eating lunch still in their jammies. Jacob thought it was hilarious to take the cheese out of his grilled cheese sandwhich, and to stick it on his head, later Samuel followed suit. They sure can entertain each other.


And that is what we have been up to!

Our Week

We have had an interesting week, I decided the boys needed to prepare for Moma and Papa's visit, so we made a chain to count down the days, the boys get really excited when they get to pull a link off each day.
Jakie covered himself in pillows with the help of Daddy of course, but he thought he was pretty cool.
The boys tried on Dad's tie.

Sam tried to dress himself.
We had friends over for dinner and their boys and ours had a good time playing together.
Sammy and Jakie played ball with Daddy in the front yard.




It was a rough week for us, I decided to potty train and it seemed to work until Jacob got sick, and then things went downhill. Thank you to all of you who have given support and have helped me stick with it. Samuel is getting the whole potty training thing, slowly, but he understands it at least. Jacob is taking a break until he is completely recovered. Wish us luck as this journey continues.

Potty Training 101

Well, I took a lot of classes while attending BYU but I wish there had been a class called Potty Training 101 because I could really use the knowledge I could glean from a course like that, right now in my life. We started potty training the boys yesterday. I have wanted to potty train them for quite a while, but it hasn't worked out, until now. I really could use any advice anyone has for me, so far Courtney has given me quite a bit of help, thank you, thank you. But I have heard, and now witnessed that potty training a boy is a bit different than a girl. If you have any tips, you moms of boys out there, please be kind and share your knowledge with me. I know I am crazy for doing them both at the same time, but I think that I would go insane if had to do this two times in a short period of time, instead of one really horrible time. Plus, they always want to be together, so it would be really difficult to potty train them separately. Anyway, thank you for any advice you could leave me.

Pictures

We have been really lame and haven't posted much on this blog, so I thought it was about time. We haven't really been up to much, but we did take a trip to the local zoo and to a local childrens museum. Here are some pictures of the boys at the museum.



Samuel and Jacob in a old log cabin kitchenSamuel churning butter
Samuel, Alan, and Jacob looking at turtles
Samuel mailing a letter at the childrens town, there was a store, a house, a gas station, a garden, a fire station, and some other things I can't recall now.
Jacob in a truck, he loved riding around in all the cars they had for the kids
Jacob and Alan in the international section
Samuel and Alan doing the same thing
The boys and Dad at the zoo looking at the giant tortoises
The boys love sitting in the big window, they love watching the school bus, the garbage truck, and the mail lady come by.
Samuel and Jacob on our rocking chair
The boys love to pretend the laundry baskets are boats
Jacob made a bed for his pooh bear out of blocks and here he is demonstrating how it works, he kept saying cheese after the picture was taken, unfortunately this was the best shot. I am so proud of my little engineer.

Hopefully we will get better at blogging and keep you all updated on what we are doing!

Sammy and Jakie's tag

Jacob and Samuel were recently tagged by their cousin Brady and these were their answers, they didn't understand some of the questions and I didn't understand some of the answers so I wrote a NA next to those I couldn't get an answer for and you will just have to use your knowledge of two year olds to figure out some of the other answers.

1. What is something mom always says to you? No No No

2. What makes mom happy? kisses

3. What makes mom sad? touches those (pointing to computer keys)

4. How does your mom make you laugh? (starts to laugh)

5. What was your mom like as a child? Baby

6. How old is your mom? 3

7. How tall is your mom? 3, 7

8. What is her favorite thing to do? sing

9. What does your mom do when you're not around? sleep

10. If your mom becomes famous, what will it be for? Jacob

11. What is your mom really good at? make peanut butter sandwiches

12. What is your mom not very good at?animals

13. What does your mom do for her job? play

14. What is your mom's favorite food? peanut butter

15. What makes you proud of your mom? singing

16. If your mom were a cartoon character, who would she be?NA

17. What do you and your mom do together? Go Park

18. How are you and your mom the same? NA

19. How are you and your mom different? NA

20. How do you know your mom loves you? Hugs, kisses

21. What does your mom like most about your dad? another day

22. Where is your mom's favorite place to go? church

Olympics

The boys have caught Olympic fever, we have been home a lot this last week because I have been battling a cough and have not been feeling very well, so we have watched a lot of Oympics. The boys have endured it fairly well, they liked the track and the volleyball, they want to have races with each other and us all the time, and they ask to play volleyball every ten minutes or so. But, when the diving started a couple of days ago, the boys had a new love, they can't get enough of the diving. When the divers jump off the board they stare until the guy hits the water, at this point, they start to laugh and jump up and down. It has been pretty funny watching them.

So, we tried to make this really nice video tour of our new place, and we did it like 3 times and them downloaded it to blogger, or I should say, attempted to download it to blogger, and attempted and finally after the fourth attempt, we decided to take pictures and do a picture tour, if you don't care about what our place looks like, feel free to ignore this.
This is our family room and dining area, as you can tell it is much bigger than our last place, the boys love the room and run around all over the place.This is both views of our galley style kitchen and below is the washer and dryer area and door to the patio and car port.
Here are the boys enjoying some time playing with chalk on the patio, to the side of the lower picture you can see our storage room and also in that picture you can see the carport.

This is the boys bathroom and their bedroom.
Here is the extra room, you can see that we haven't done much with this room yet.
This is our bedroom with the lovely window seat, and below is our master bath, yeah, we have our own bathroom, no more waking kids when we have to use the bathroom in the middle of the night. By, the way don't you just love the wallpaper, it is our favorite.

And there you have it, a tour of our new digs. We are enjoying the time off that Alan has from work and school and are anticipating some good years here. We love you all and miss you. We hope some of you will be able to come visit.

Cousins

We were able to visit with Bryce and Maile and family before we left for Texas, we had a fun time going to the park. Brady was a lot of fun showing Sammy and Jakie how to kick a soccer ball and to play at the park. At one point he had Jakie by the hand and was taking him around and talking to him, he followed him well and soon Sam had Jakie's hand and there was a little train of boys running around. Leilani was a doll and so fun to watch, you can tell she is trying to hold her own with her big brother. She has the most beautiful red hair, which I am totally jealous of, and she was very sweet. Thanks Bryce and Maile for getting together with us on your trip.We also had a new arrival to Alan's family, his sister Karen had a new boy, Caleb was born at the end of July and we are happy to have him in the family, congrats Karen, Chris, and Gavin.

All of the boys together, Sam, Gavin, Caleb, Jakie.

Jacob and Samuel's Birthday

The boys turned two before we moved, but we never had a chance to blog about their birthday. They received way to many gifts from very kind family members. Here they are enjoying their new car garage, it has had a lot of use already.
Alan of course had to set it up, the boys were trying to play with it even before it was out of the box, it was a little frustrating to Alan because he couldn't put it together with both boys running cars down the unassembled ramp.
They got a couple of new items of clothing which unlike most kids who get new clothes and throw them aside, Sammy and Jakie had to put all of them on right then, (Aunt Marisa and Uncle Robert they loved their new pooh and "ticker" shirts. Thanks)

The boys also enjoyed all the balloons they got to play with.


These are the cakes we made for their party (thanks Jane.) We made a fishbowl cake using two round cakes and cutting the top and bottom off the cakes to make the fishbowl shape, and then covered it with fondant, and also we made a cake to look like an ocean scene.
We want to thanks all those who were kind enough to send cards, gifts, call, or send their love, we appreciate all that you do for us and our little guys. We love you all and are grateful for you in our lives.