Pictures and Update

So the boys have had to stay indoors a lot recently because of sickness and most recently bad weather so we have been playing a lot of games, the boys especially love hide and go seek. Here the boys are just hanging out on the couch playing with each other.
Cute Sam!
Cute Jacob!
On a nice day the boys helped me wash some windows. They thought this was so cool, I just hope the same enthusiasm is there when I ask them to do chores when they are older.
They also love to wash the mirrors in the bathrooms, they beg me to let them help whenever I pull out the blue bottle of windex.
It seems our boys are budding artists, they discovered how much they love coloring the patio with chalk, on this day they got covered head to toe in chalk, luckily it was bath night.
Sam, check out those pants.
Jacob also had a great time.
When the boys were potty training we had many incentives for them. One incentive that we had to pull out to keep things going were these Lightning McQueen slippers (for those of you who don't watch Disney shows that much, he is a character from the movie Cars.) These slippers their cousin has and at Christmas they always wanted to wear them and so when they saw that they could have them they were super excited. Here is Jacob who earned his a couple of days before Sam.
Sam looking extremely happy to finally wear his new slippers.
I always try to buy clothes after the season for the next year, sometimes when I get bored with what they are wearing I will pull out a new shirt and make a big deal about it to get the boys to feel like something cool is happening. Here are the boys with their new shirts waiting to go on a walk.
Jacob has always loved books, and so has Sam, but recently Jacob has been "reading" to Sam a lot. Here they are after a bath. Jacob will tell the story with what he remembers from us reading to him and will act like he is reading, it's pretty cute.
Alan had spring break last week and so we went to the museum, we seem to go there a lot. They were having a special group of activities for spring break, so we got to catch a session of a laser light show. Here the boys are sporting their holographic diffraction grating glasses they used for the show. This one is Sam.
And Jacob.
And here are some cute pictures of the boys cheesing it up. They always say cheese when we pull the camera out.
Jacob
Sam

And that is what we have been doing. We are just glad to have Alan back from his geology student expo in Norman Oklahoma, the boys missed him a ton although he was only gone for 3 days. We are getting excited for Minda's brother to visit with his family from Nebraska.

Kids Say the Darndest Things

Here are a couple of conversations we have had with Samuel and Jacob recently.


Samuel: Mommy I am going to take a break (he says leaning back in his chair and chomping on a donut)
Minda: Sammy you make me laugh!
Samuel: Mommy I make myself laugh.


Minda: Jacob do you want to learn some Finnish?
Jacob: Sure Mommy!
Minda: Say oon poika. (translation: I am a boy)
Jacob: Oo poooka.
Minda: Try again, oon poika. (Jacob gets a screwed up look on his face and laughs a little)
Jacob: I can go to Ikea mommy. ( I guess he figured that Ikea was enough foreign language for him.)
Minda: Well that's a start Jakie.


Jacob had been jumping on Sam and Sam just wanted to lay on the couch because he was tired after church. Jacob kept jumping and Sam kept telling him to stop. I finally had to remove Jacob from the situation, then he went and got his blanket and joined Sam on the couch. At first I just thought Sam was tired but then I thought he looked a little sick.
Minda: Sammy are you sick?
Sammy: Yes mommy I am sick.
Minda: Why are you sick?
Sammy: Jakie

Why I love having twins!

I recently read a blog entry from a twin mommy blog with this title. It really made me start to think about my boys and what advantages there are for our family because we have twins. Today I decided to make a list of all the good. (This is probably due to the fact that I have been focusing a lot on the whining and fighting that seems to emanate from these 2 1/2 year olds and decided to refocus my attention to the positive instead of the negative.)

Twin Top Ten List

10. I love to hear the boys talking to each other. My favorite thing to do is to stand next to their bedroom door and listen to their conversations before I get them out of their bed in the morning.
9. They love to give each other hugs. Usually this ends in a wrestling match between them and then a lot of laughing. They really do love each other.
8. They love to do the same things, which makes it easy when deciding what to play every day.

7. They always have a friend their age to do whatever they want with and usually that friend is willing to help with whatever the game.

6. Getting dressed in the morning is easy because their outfits usually are coordinating.
5. When one is sick, hurt, or sad the other feels a lot of compassion for his brother. They are always willing to do whatever they need to in order to cheer up their brother.

4. Usually there is always one happy child.3. One is always willing to eat the others food. It seems that they like different things, Sam is always willing to eat Jacob's vegetables and Fruit, and Jacob will always eat Sam's noodles.

2. Two boys make life more interesting. Somehow they seem to find things they aren't supposed to get into easier, it might be a little annoying, but it sure is entertaining. Especially when you find your boys on the patio covered head to toe in soot from the grill. Or find your boys sitting in the sink with their toothbrushes.
1. The number one top reason is: whenever we have the next one it will seem like a breeze. If I can survive Sammy and Jakie, I think I could survive anything. Well maybe not anything, but it hopefully will give me some advantage.

Success!

Some of you may think we had fallen off the face of the earth, but alas, no we are still around we've just been busy potty training, and I am happy to say things have been pretty successful so far. We have had our ups and downs, but the boys pulled through and are successfully potty training. YEAH! For those of you who have never potty trained you may be thinking, what's the big deal, well it is a big deal, trust me.

Anyway, enough about all that. We have been trying to keep busy in this wonderful weather we have been having (except for today's torrential downpour). Here are some pictures of the boys enjoying the weather, picnics outside, tricycle rides, what more could a 2 1/2 year old love more.

The boys have been trying to be big helpers too. They love, love, love to help with the dishes, don't you love their organizational skills (check out the drawer.)

Jacob loves his daddy. The other day he put on one of Alan's old hats and his slippers and announced with a huge grin that he was daddy. I am glad that Alan is such a good example for them!

Silly Boys

So, I haven't posted in a while because nothing too interesting has happened. So, I looked at the pictures we have taken over the last two weeks, all of them were funny pictures of the boys being silly.

Here the boys are doing something they have come to love, pulling their shirts over their heads and running around the house. Richard and Robert you might recall doing this when you were kids too, remember Aladdin?
The boys have also learned to love oranges thanks to papa. And Dad has been teaching them how to eat them like a soccer player. Jacob hasn't quite caught on yet though.


Right after Christmas we decided to eat the gingerbread houses we made for family home evening with the missionaries before Christmas. Afterward we played Candyland and the boys loved it, I think that is going to be a new tradition in our family.

New Phone Numbers

We are changing our phone numbers and so our old one won't work after the 16th of January. If you don't have our new number and would like it please contact us on our old number before the 16th so we can give it to you. You may also post your request via the blog if that is easier.

Christmas and our time in Utah

Sammy and Jakie had a great Christmas. Here they are showing off their new Christmas "Thomas the Tank Engine" jammies. They must have been good this year because they got a ton of stuff from Santa and our families. Some highlights were new tricycles, a wooden train set, new homemade comforters, new clothes, books, music, etc. We enjoyed Christmas Eve here in Waco with our little family and friends we have made here, it was a great time. Christmas day we spent in Waco as well, that is, until we realized that we might have hit a storm if we left for Utah when we planned. So, we left at six o'clock in the evening Christmas Day. We drove all night and missed some of the storm but still hit it a little before Gallup New Mexico. After more than 23 hours we surprised Alan's family by showing up unannouced. It was fun to surprise them. We then headed to Minda's parents house where we surprised them as well.

We had a great time visiting family, here are the boys bowling with Minda's family. We were able to see three of the four of Minda's brothers and their families.

We were able to visit all of Alan's family before his sister left for her first semester at BYU-I. Here are the boys with their cousin Gavin.
The boys with Grandpa Boppus.
Playing games!

Alan's Mom wanted to take the boys to the Monte. L Bean Science museum, they loved seeing the animals, as long as they didn't move.
Unfortunately we all got sick while we were in Utah. Alan mended pretty quickly, but the rest of us were sick most of our time there. Minda got three different sicknesses so she was down and out for a lot of the time. But, after being cooped up for days and days the boys were done being in the house. So, we took them to the Kangaroo Zoo, a place with a lot of bouncy toys. They loved it, especially the slides. They quickly learned to climb the ladders and slide down, they were quite agile.



We wanted to thank our families for taking such good care of us during our stays with them, and we were sorry we didn't get to see everyone we wanted to. We are finally mostly over the sickness and are happy to be home and sleeping in our own beds after sleeping very little on our car ride.

Something Funny

So a week or two ago Alan found Jacob and Samuel in the bathroom brushing their teeth in the sink. It was just too quiet and I knew something was up.

The boys have also enjoyed copying the things we do. For instance they like to take turns putting my purse on and going to the door and saying "See ya later, Gotta go, Bye Bye." It is pretty funny, but I don't think Alan likes the fact that they are carrying around a purse.

Another funny thing that Jacob has done recently happened first a couple of weeks ago. We were at Alan's school and Jacob kept saying crocodile, I want to go to the crocodile. We didn't understand him, we just couldn't figure it out. Then we asked him if he wanted to go with us on the elevator. And then he got really excited and kept saying alligator. And then it dawned on us. He pronounced elevator as alligator, but he was confused and called it a crocodile instead. It was really cute!

All Aboard

I know we have blogged about our children's museum before, but we love it. There is tons for the kids to do and inevitably the kids will ask to go there at least ten times a week. Right now there is a Christmas train exhibit at the museum. We have been twice now. Here are the boys enjoying their time looking at the trains.


The boys really like the music room in the museum too. There is a giant piano and this giant cello. Jacob calls it his "mootar" we don't know where he got this from, but we assume it is his attempt at saying guitar. They are always coming up with the most random stuff.Sam enjoying a quiet moment with Mom. Recently he has been hugging us around our necks and saying Mommy/Daddy I love you so much. It melts are hearts to him every time. How can you get upset with a kid who is doing that?

Deck the Halls and Noodles

For family home evening this week we decorated our Christmas tree. The boys were so excited!
Jacob and the tree
Mommy and the boys decorating the tree
We also gave the boys Ramen noodles for the first time. When I was a kid my mom would bribe us to be good with what she called Crazy Noodles. She would only let us eat these when we were really good. I didn't know until later that her Crazy noodles were really Ramen noodles and that other people complain about having to eat them. Aw the innocence of childhood. Our boys loved to play with them, they didn't eat too many of them, but they did enjoy them overall.

Thanksgiving

We had a wonderful thanksgiving with our friends Brad and Cassidy here in Waco. The boys loved playing with Brylie and Brody and we had a fun time eating and playing games. On Friday after a little Black Friday shopping, we headed to Houston. Alan's MTC companion Jeff and his wife Tahlia live in Houston with their daughter Lily. We had a great time visiting with them. The boys especially loved the trolley ride we took around the Woodlands, as we watched Christmas lights and saw the holiday shoppers. Thanks so much for hosting us!
Jacob, Samuel and Lily
Jeff, Tahlia, and Lily
Samuel and Mommy
Jacob and Daddy
Waiting for the trolley.