Busy Growing

I realized that I hadn't ever posted to say that Aspen now has 6 teeth. I can't even remember when she got the 6th one but it's been in for several weeks. She has 3 on top and 3 on bottom. She has the front 2 of each and the third teeth are on the left side of her mouth, so she's a bit unbalanced. I can see the outline of both of the next 2 teeth coming and I hope they come soon cuz they have been causing her bum to get really sore! It was so bad on Thursday that it started bleeding :( I had never had that happen with Hunter so I started freaking out and called my sister immediately to find out if I needed to do something besides desitin.   Poor girl.  Luckily it is pretty much better but flares up really easy if I don't change her immediately after she goes.  I'm thinking they are also the reason she hasn't been sleeping very well lately.  As soon as she is back to sleeping through the night again we will be moving her in with Hunter, we can't wait to have our room back!!  She will be 1 on Sunday, so crazy!

You can't see the third one on top but it's a pretty good shot of the rest of them.

Some other random updates of Aspen are that she says Uh Oh, a lot, and especially when she throws her food on the floor (which I'm pretty sure she does to save it for later, cuz she will go under the table and start eating shortly after we get her down, she's crazy!)  And she says Dadadad, and you can totally tell she is saying it for Ben.  Sometimes it kind of sounds like she is trying to say Hunter, but not very clear.  She says shoes pretty good.  She has said owie a couple times but we aren't really sure if she knows what it means.  And she totally plays phone.  She will grab just about anything, put it to her ear and say "Hello."  The L's aren't really pronounced so it's kind of more like huh-o.  I think maybe I'm on the phone too much or something!  Haha she just seems so little to already by playing phone!  She has said Mamam at me a couple times but not too often.  When we first had Hunter me and Ben would both try to get him to say our name (mom or dad) first, but then I talked to a lady that always taught her kids to say Dad first, cuz you know that which ever name they can say is the one they want, especially when they need their bum changed.  Haha.  I thought it was so funny and I have only said Mom to Aspen a couple times, just when Ben's around but secretly I'm OK with her knowing his name first.  She is kind of a stinker and thinks she needs to be held or walked around most of the day so right when Daddy comes home she heads to him and holds up her hand to have him walk her around since Mom isn't doing it all day like she wants.  She can also sign "more."  We taught Hunter a few sign words and it was really nice to be able to communicate some before he could really talk.  So far that's the only word Aspen has learned and she usually only does it if I ask her if she wants more, someday I'm sure she'll figure out to actually use it.  And she also just learned to fold her arms for prayers.  It is so cute!  And just the past 3 days or so she has realized that she can stand without holding onto anything.  She will stand up by holding onto something then let go and just stand there for a few seconds.  She thinks she's pretty cool when she does it, but so do we!  Wow she has been doing tons lately, I didn't realize there was so much new until I typed it out!

I attempted to braid her hair the other day.  It didn't work out so good. Haha.  Ben really doesn't like the pony on top of her head so I figured I would try something else but her hair is just too thin!

While I was getting ready to head up to Ephraim the kiddos were playing.  It got to quiet so I went to investigate and this is what I found.  Hunter was lotioning him and Aspen!  And for some reason besides the globs on the side of Aspens face he had it mostly in both of their hair.  His I was able to just do it spiky and it looked fine but there was so much in Aspens I had to give her a bath!

Aspen and I went up to Ephraim with my family this weekend.  Kira had her Badgerette review, it was way fun to get to go see her dance again.  And surprise, surprise we even got to see my Dad dance again!!!  He thought he was done when Kira graduated high school. Haha!  They asked all the Dad's to stand up in the audience, and after they did asked them to come down to the floor.  Once they were down there they were informed they were going to have a dance off!  It was awesome!  They all took a turn showing a "move" then we narrowed them down to 4.  They showed us another "move" then he decided on one of the winners but couldn't tell which of the other 3 was getting the loudest screams.  Brandi yelled "One more time!"  And the announcer listened!  Haha.  We got to see them show another move!  And we screamed and ended up getting my Dad to win!  And in the process got Tucker (Brandi's baby) to cry and Aspen to look at us like we were crazy!  Then we decided that we would just have to have our Dad dance with Talee and Aspen instead of their Dad's!  Both of our hubby's were more than OK with that :)

Ben was on call so he couldn't come up.  Him and Hunter went camping out to Sand Hollow and had a fun time back at home.  Hunter ended up getting the swimmers itch, he's not ever gotten it before poor guy.  He also has an ear infection right now.  I took him to the Dr on Wed so the medicine has been working long enough that he's feeling lots better, but still sad that he had to deal with that and right when it was feeling better deal with the swimmers itch :(

He sure is happy for all the stuff he's dealing with :)

Green Eggs and Pancakes

We had a pretty chill St Patricks Day, in fact we always do.  Last year and the year before I completely forgot it was St Patricks Day and didn't even have Hunter wear green!  I don't really do anything for St Patricks so when I told Hunter he needed to wear a green shirt it took some convincing.  Granted I had forgot again that it was St Patricks so he was already pulling a shirt over his head before I told him, and granted that shirt happened to be a Thomas shirt whom he loves.  But I finally convinced him.  And the next 3 days he also wore green shirts which I didn't even notice until he came up to me on the third day and informed me that he didn't have any other green shirts that this was his last one!  Haha!  I guess I did too good of a job convincing him! 

I talked to my sister in law that day and they had had green pancakes for breakfast.  I thought that was something fun and easy I could do next year.  Well Ben had a meeting that night so wasn't home for dinner so of course I didn't feel like doing much cooking (oh wait, I never feel like cooking) so we ended up doing green eggs and pancakes for dinner, since it's super easy and super fast.

Hunter thought it was pretty cool, and I wouldn't be surprised if he ends up asking me what color we are going to make our pancakes next time we have them :)

I thought they looked so cute!  Aspen even has a green bracelet on!

Oh my kiddos :)

For meals we have had Aspen in her bumbo on top of the table for a quite a while and we finally went and got her a booster seat!

Can you tell she loves it!  And Hunter thinks it's pretty cool that she has a chair just like him now!

Typical.  The boys hunched over Ben's Ipod playing a game and Aspen still eating!  Man that girl can eat!

This is her new discovery.  She loves to climb in the dishwasher!  And it's so much cooler when I have just loaded it so there is water that she can splash in.  And throwing silverware around is the best!  Hunter loved to do this when he was her age too!  Oh and the fridge is so cool too!  Whenever it's open she gets there as quick as she can to climb in before we can shut it!

She already knows what good food is!  She loved Navajo tacos!

We were outside on Saturday, the kiddos playing and me and Ben (basically just Ben while I supervised) were making sure our bunny cage was ready for our bunnies.  Aspen would not stay in one place and play, so was crawling all over the place, and of course most of the time straight to the street.  Why kids think the street is so cool I really just don't know.  Luckily we have a pretty calm street!  As you can see she destroyed her clothes!  They were so dirty, and there was a hole in her knee, the toe and heel of her sock too!  Her toe even got scraped up and bled a little bit!  It didn't slow her down at all, I don't think she even noticed!

After we got done we ran to the nearest Redbox to return our movie, I think she was a bit worn out from all her crawling around!

The day before Aspen scraped her toe Hunter had been riding his bike with flip flops and used his toes for brakes!  He came walking up to me and said "Mom, look at my blood."  He was totally calm about it!  He got both of his toes and it looks like it even scraped off part of his nail.  It's kind of hard to tell from the pic but there are their twinner toes!  Aspen got her toes painted for the first time just the day before and scraped most of the paint off!  She sure liked having them painted though!  She sat there and talked to them for a few minutes :)  Then on Sunday Hunter used his toes as brakes again at Grandma's house and started them bleeding again!  Crazy kiddos!



Our President's Day

For President's Day we went to Zion with my Dad, Sisters, niece and nephews.  We couldn't decide if we were going to go or not and finally last minute we decided to go with them.  So we all got dressed really quick, threw a lunch together, had Hunter go potty and headed out.  About 5 min away from our house, after we had met up with my family and headed to Zion, Hunter informed us that he needed to go to the bathroom.  So frustrating when he had just gone!  Well it's not a very long drive so we asked him if he could hold it for a little way, he said ya, and we told him to tell us if he needed us to just pull over if he couldn't hold it.  Well just a couple min later I hear grunting... Yep he pooped his pants.  So that was his first and only #2 accident.  We pulled over immediately and luckily it had only gotten in his underwear cuz we hadn't brought any extra pants.  And luckily I hadn't cleaned out our vehicle since he has started wearing underwear and we found a pull up so he didn't have to go commando!  (And just FYI he has been doing awesome the past couple weeks.  Last Sunday was the last time he had a #1 accident, so a whole week with none!  And he almost always wakes up dry too!)

Our picnic before we headed up the mountain.  (I forgot to take our camera, I think it was just in my purse in the vehicle, so thanks for the pics dad!)

This is how Aspen spent the trip.  She did pretty good, just got a little crabby towards the end when she was ready for a nap.  And of course she didn't fall asleep until we were almost back to our vehicles :)

The whole crew minus my dad since he was taking the pic.

And of course he had to take a picture of his girls.

Family shot.  We had Aspen's blanket wrapped around her legs so they wouldn't be cold and it kept falling so I put it around my neck... I don't know why I didn't think to put it in the backpack, it was bugging me the whole time :)

Talee, Dace and Hunter in a little cave.

Quick break and then headed back down the mountain.  We had a way fun time!

7 years!



For our anniversary we headed up north on the Wed before our anniversary.  We decided to spend the first night in a hotel so that we could swim.  The kids loved it!  They both thought the hotel room was the coolest thing ever!  Right when we walked in Hunter started telling us what bed was his and where things went, it was so funny!  And Aspen kept unloading thing from the bags, crawling them into the bathroom, and throwing them in the tub!  The next day we got up and headed to Hogle Zoo:

What was holding Hunter's attention?



The elephant!  When we first went over to look at it I thought it was inside, then all of a sudden he came walking out to eat some hay!

I think this is one of the only pics of Ben at the zoo.

This guy was cracking me up, he was sitting there eating cardboard the whole time.  His number orangutan was doing something else... his girlfriend.  And she was sleeping through it.  I'm glad my kids were to young to realize what was going on cuz they didn't stop the whole time we were in there.  The best was when a dad came in with his kids and he sat there and stared at the orangutans!

Hunter measuring up to the gorillas.

We were watching this bird cuz we thought it's hair coming out of it's feathers was funny.  Then all of a sudden it snapped at another bird and it's neck was like 6 inches long!  It was so crazy!

There were several cats like this.  I thought they just looked like house cats with stripes, haha. 

We liked checking out his huge paws!

I was hoping he would get up and walk around but never did, he was just lounging.  I guess that's what we get for going when it's cold.

I think the giraffe were Hunter's favorite.  They kept licking the walls, and when Hunter saw the picture today he reminded me that one of them peed.  Haha.  Of all the things he remembered,  although it did take it a solid 5 min to finish peeing so I guess that kind of time could stick in a 3 year olds head.

Aspen wouldn't leave her headband on.  She kept pulling it around her neck so when I pushed it back up her hair was crazy and tweaking everywhere!!

This was only a couple minutes after the picture above was taken.

 

Hunter looked at the camels long enough for us to get this picture, then he was too busy watching the fence open and shut for workers to get in the zoo, and was done with animals after that.  Good thing we were about done!

After that we went to a movie, then headed to Ben's Grandparents house where we stayed for the next 2 nights.  Friday we spent most of the day at the Hunting Expo (Ben didn't know about the Hunting Expo when we got married, otherwise there is no way I would have gotten married this weekend!)  Saturday we headed down to my aunts house and she watched our kids while we went to the Provo temple.

Ben of course had been to this temple before but it was new to me. It was really pretty.

After we picked up our kids we headed back to the expo to finish the last couple of rows he hadn't gotten to the day before.  Then we had a Birthday dinner for Ben's mom and brothers.  After the dinner we headed to our friends house where we spent the night.  Sunday we just hung out at there house.  It was nice to just relax after several crazy busy days.  And we finally got to meet there baby girl.  She was so cute!  After lunch with them we headed home.

Hunter only had 2 accidents the whole time we were there, and the crazy thing was that it wasn't on our long drive there or back.  He did awesome for the drive, I was really worried about it and almost put him in a pull up.  Ever since that weekend though he has been having accidents pretty often.  I don't know if he realized he can hold it a long time or what.  But now he keeps on having accidents when he is playing games.  I know it's kinda mean but if he has accidents he can't play games for the rest of the day, cuz I know what he's doing is just holding it cuz he doesn't want to pause the game.  The craziest part is that I don't really let him play games for very long.  Yesterday we were headed out the door for church and he peed his pants.  So frustrating... he had gone like a half hour before was all.  Oh well I guess we just have to play the up and down game for a while til he really fully gets it.

Well we had a great 5 day weekend and spent it with lots of family and friends.  We only had our trip to the temple to ourselves but it was still a great anniversary.

For Valentine's Day Ben surprised me with chocolates and flowers.  Well kind of, my brother told me about the flower part, he saw Ben buying them while he was buying his wife some.  Ben also surprised me with not having scouts, so last minute we decided to run to a movie, and his sister was awesome and watched our kids on such late notice.  Like it was 7:10 when I asked Ben if he realized he was late for scouts and that's when he informed me he didn't have scouts.  And I said we should have gone to a movie.  He said ya we should you find out if there's one that we can make it to and I will see if my sister can watch the kids.  The movie started at 7:25 and it takes about 10 min to drive there from our house.  His sister met us at the theater and we just switched vehicles and ran in just in time!  It was a good show and the first time we've been to the movies without our kids and us together in a long time!!  Thanks Jos!!

Ice Fishing

I forgot to put these on the last post.  Ben, his Dad and Hunter went ice fishing just before New Years.  Hunter was still talking about it for several days after.  Here are some pics of their trip:

In between Christmas and our Anniversary

These are not really in much of an order.  But it's basically all that went on in between Christmas and our anniversary, it's all just everyday stuff but it was a fun month and a half!  And as I was putting them all in here realized that I have way more of Aspen then Hunter :(  She is starting to get to that fun stage where she is discovering everything, so I guess that means more pics!

Sporting her tights hat on New Years.  This is my only picture of New Year's.  I think I must just get too caught up in the holidays since I only had one for Thanksgiving too, and only really got Christmas pictures at our house not much at the Grandparents houses. 

We spent New Years in Kanab with my family.  It was a great weekend except for one set back.  Hunter decided he wasn't even going to go number 2 in the potty anymore :(  I don't know if you will remember but he was always going number 2 in the potty, very rarely number 1 but hadn't had a number 2 accident in months.  It was so frustrating from the time we got to Kanab he started going in his pull ups and it was like 3 times a day!  We barely had enough pull ups to get us through the weekend.  I was hoping that it was just since we weren't home, but nope it continued when we got home.  Finally after a week or 2 of changing big poopy pull ups I found a solution.  You are going to think I'm crazy when I tell you this but it amazing worked.  I went and grabbed a pair of underwear had him put them on and told him he was not going to go poo or pee in them he was going to do it in the potty.  I really didn't think it was going to work I was just so frustrated that I needed to do something and I was just hoping that when he went in the underwear he wouldn't like how it felt and start trying again.  But he didn't have one number 2 accident until just a few days ago and it was kind of our fault, I'll tell ya more when I do that post.  He even started doing really good with peeing in the potty.  He still occasionally has accidents, especially if he is playing a game and doesn't want to stop, but I feel like he was doing pretty decent.  (Yes was, the past few days he has had quite a few accidents.)

Aspen grabbed Hunter's apple off the table and went to town on it!



We had some fun trips to the park.  Can you tell she loved the swings!

Surprise. Surprise.  Hunter even picks his nose while swinging!  No wonder he wanted the baby swing instead of the big kid swing.  We can not get him to keep his finger out of his nose.  I think half the time he's just doing it for something to do with his hands!  The turkey has caused himself to have bloody noses more times than I can count!

I think she thought I was taking too long getting ready or something!  I came out of the bathroom and found her half under the computer chair.

You always have to document the first time they eat an oreo!  I think she was pretty happy with her new found favorite treat!

Of course she was bound to get messier than the first picture.

She looked at her hands, saw they were all messy and I guess this is what she figured you're supposed to do with messy hands!

My belly is too full! Stop taking pictures!

We got a new table finally!  Our other table had one of the chairs legs broken so only 3 chairs, and with Aspen sitting on top of it in her bumbo she could reach every bodies plates.  It was definitely time for a bigger table!  It has a leaf in the middle so it can be even longer and we have 8 chairs total.  It also matches our kitchen really well.

I think the kids really like it too!  Hunter has already put some pretty deep scratches in it.  I was not a happy mom.  We had some Menchie's (a frozen yogurt place) spoons that he likes to use and the top of them are apparently sharp enough to gouge my table.  He doesn't get to use those spoons anymore.  He did it twice, the first time I didn't see when he did it so didn't know how he had done it.  Luckily you can't really see it unless the light hits it but you can sure feel them.

Aspen figured out where there were some binkis within her reach.  She started crawling just shortly after Christmas.  Or I guess you might call it scooting.  She will have one leg up or her foot and the other on her knee.  The last couple weeks she has started to sometimes crawl on her knees but she can move faster the other way so will usually cruise around like that.  Oh and one of her favorite things to do is go under the kitchen table to try to find a snack.

Success! She found the binki!

For Christmas Ben got me a bike and a trailer for the kids.  They love to go on rides!  For the Superbowl we loaded our snacks up in the trailer with the kids and rode to Ben's parents house.  It was fun but definitely wore me out.  The bike Ben originally got me was a Black Friday one and when we put it together it felt like it was falling apart, so we ended up taking it back and combined that money with Christmas money we got and got me a very nice one.  So of course Ben needed to get him a nicer one too.  So we knew tax money was coming so we ended up getting him a new bike too.  We are all set for many rides to come!

Hunter will usually ride his own bike.  Me, him and Aspen went for a ride the other day and I pushed him farther than he had gone before and he did great!

Aspen kept going in and out of sleep the whole time.  Just a few seconds before this picture she had been awake.

We finally cleaned out our basement.  We've only been here 3 years now, I guess it was about time to unpack something besides just the necessities :)  We ended up filling up both our huge trash cans (the ones the trash people pick up) full of stuff that we have no idea why we saved!  And we took several boxes and bags worth of stuff to the D.I.  Can you tell Hunter was loving going through everything?  He kept finding all kinds of treasures :)

We spent a good part of a Saturday with Ben while he was on call and got called out to work.  Hunter climbed to the top of this "mountain" which is actually one of their tanks.

The kids always love bath time and up until Aspen could scoot around Hunter always claimed the spot by the faucet.  Now that she can move she is always trying to get in there to play with the water too.

Aspen got her 3rd tooth shortly after Christmas (I think that's why she had a snotty nose on Christmas, she was teething.)  She didn't get her 4th tooth until about a week or 2 ago.  So the one top tooth was pretty much all the way in!  It looked so funny!  I was waiting for that one to come in so long that I didn't even notice that she was getting a tooth on the bottom too!  The day she finally got the other top tooth she also had a third bottom tooth.  So I'm not really sure which one was #4 and which was #5.

She loves to eat real food now.  I call her my little piggy cuz she will scarf down just about anything I put in front of her and usually won't stop til I stop giving her food!  Then when I set her on the ground and she heads under the table to try to get whatever she dropped!  There are some meals that she eats more than Hunter!  I have no idea how she is so little!  She must have her daddy's genes or something!

This day she had wiped her messy hands all over in her hair.  So I had to wash her whole head with the rag and this is how she looked after she got all cleaned up!

And one of her most recent past times is to yank the dish towel of the oven so she can talk to and kiss (I wasn't fast enough to get a picture of her kissing) the baby in the oven!!