holy moley

ahh, i can finally breathe, for i have updated the blog. i apologize for the lack of posting. i just save it all up and post it all at once. so it's a bunch of posts, i know. but i have officially decided to quit scrapbooking and make my blog into a book each year. therefore, i have to include much more juicyness.

some more tidbits...

sam has 6 teeth and is A L M O S T crawling. oh, i'm so in love with him.

jack is a hard 2-almost-3-yr-old. that's all i have to say about that.

shawn started his 3rd session. we have one more after this and then he starts his rotations.

what?!?!?

our ward split while we were in texas and when we came back i was called to be in the RS presidency. it is an odd thing. i felt i had a lot of time on my hands, time to give, let's say, a couple of months ago. then i started rehearsals and now i'm in the RS presidency. so now there is no time. none to be had. but i'm so grateful for the chance to serve. it is better to be busy than to be idle, yes?

missing shirts

this is my sweet one "flexing".
and this...i don't even know what to say about this tasty morsel. there are no words.

all boxed up

it was time for shawn to go back to school after coming home for lunch one day and he asked me what he should do with sam and i said to just put him down somewhere. this is where i found him.

mommy, i ate all my toast

this is what he said to me the other morning and i turned to find this. craziness all around.


my cutie-patootie

TEXAS

for shawn's last break, we dropped the boys off with our parents in utah and then headed to dallas, texas to visit some of our besties, nate and callie. this is what i have to say - i did not know that dallas was ever cold, but it was. everyone said it was abnormally cold, which is typical, shawn and i seem to bring cold weather with us everywhere we go. however, we had a most wonderful time. here's some of the happenings.
one of the highlights was going to the stock yards in fort worth. here we are in front of the signature longhorns. for day-to-day goings-on, pretty cool animals. for your bridal pictures? not so much. true story, at the very moment we were taking these pics, there was a bride 15 feet from us capturing her special moment with these magnificent creatures, wallowing in the mud. only in texas. i said that many times on this trip.

this is the train that comes through the stock yards, and honest to goodness, i felt like i was about to hop on the hogwarts express. geeky? possibly.
have you ever noticed that when you have a group of boys, when one does something, they all HAVE to do it, like their manhood is about it expire if they don't? folks, that continues well into adulthood as manifested here. in all fairness, i THINK shawn is bending his knees to look short. i think.


here we have a diagram of how a stampede takes place, and shawn kindly stopped to enlighten nathan.
our favorite thing to do with these guys is play the beloved game of dirty marbles. it is ritualistic, you might say. shawn and nate are on a team, callie and i are on a team. we did a lot of this, as well as some fantastic card playing. i didn't even have to go to bed at 11 because i didn't have to worry about the kiddos. it was seriously great.
nate and callie...thanks from the bottom of our big hearts. our lives and bellies have been touched and expanded (respectively) and will never be the same after living the texas way. love you.

mr. wiggle worm

because jack is such an ACTIVE little one, i was sure Heavenly Father would send me a calm, contented one for number two, but that is not the case. sam is just as crazy as jack was. so we bought him a johnny-jumper to wiggle and bounce in and the only doorway i have to put it in while we are downstairs is the door to my garage. so here's some lovely pics of that. we started by taking pics of sam (below) but jack cannot stand it when there are pictures being taken and he is not involved so...

still sporting the chub legs. love it.

bath time

this is their first official bath together. until now, i have been bathing sam in the kitchen sink cuz it was way easier. he loved the sink, it was his own personal hot tub. but he's just too darn big so i popped him in the tub with jack. there were a couple of times he looked at me like "what the heck is going on?"