Lazy Sunday

Well... since there was no Sunday School this morning, we took advantage and stayed in our pajamas for a loooonnnng time today. While I was still sleeping (until 9am!, thank you Jeff), and dad and the boys had already been up for a few hours, they had several of Mitchell's old hot wheeel tracks set up. Something they can only do when Jeff has chunk of time with them, since I don't have a clue when it comes to assemling them.While I cleaned, they were on to the next activity of contructing a new train track.

Jeff gets pretty serious about this, as you can see :)
And this afternoon... movie time. Since Joel and Grant were NOT agreeing on the movie choice we decided they could watch their own movie choice, in different rooms. I have to say, I can't believe I have never thought of this before. We are one hour into the movies right now and there has been complete silence the entire time. Brilliant! Downstairs... "Cars"

Upstairs... "Monsters Inc."

And... Grant didn't last long, up too early this morning to make it through his movie:)

Baby Liam

I had the opportunity to snap some pictures of my good friend Becki's new baby today. We originally had in mind that we were going to do the sleepy kind of newborn pictures where they are all curled up sleeping, but this 3 week old had different plans for us:) He was not happy about the pictues and sleeping was not something he planned on doing this afternoon, nor did he want anything to do with hats! But... after looking through the 300 pictures I took, I was really quite happy with a handful of them (even though we weren't able to get too many pictures, I did have lots of fun putting different effects on the ones we did get:). He is quite a beautiful baby, as you can see...

Keeping Busy... Inside

You really realize how long a COLD winter day is when it starts at 6am, and you are inside with a 2 and 4 year old for the length of day who are quite literally "bouncing off the walls". I used to think that was just a phrase, "bouncing off the walls", but Joel and Grant actually DO... bounce... off of the walls! Oh we try to keep busy....coloring...
Play doh... they prefer to bury toy animals in the play doh and then cut them out, but hey, whatever works...

see?...

and, or course, packages of those spongy capsule animal thingies that melt in water and the pop open:)

L.O.N.G winter days... whatever we can do to help the time pass, we'll do it.

Another Day, Another Birthday Party

We had a splendid time on Saturday celebrating Joel's birthday with lots grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins. Joel finally got his Batman cake he has been talking about for MANY months and clearly Grant wanted in on some of that licking the frosting off of Batman's feet... check out how close he moved in:) Joel, Grant, and my cousin's daughter Jaelyn

Lincoln was SUCH a cute big cousin, very carefully helping Joel read each and every card before he got to open the present.

If you look closely, you will see tears welling in Grant's eyes. He became so devastated that none of the presents were for him that he hung his head down and quietly cried in the middle of the gift opening. Poor guy. Luckily Grandma Benson came to the rescue with a little package for him.

Bean bag chair from Gpa and Gma Benson was a big hit.

As was the remote control car from Gpa and Gma Kokotovich

Cousins, Lincoln and Jayna

And the team (and their reading glasses) huddle together to begin transformer contruction:)

... and then the real transformer expert steps in to help out the boys. The package that Joel got from Aunt Connie had two transformers in it, and somehow Grant immediately claimed one as his own, and surprisingly, Joel was totally fine with that. He only cared about the race car, the airplane was all Grant's. And on a side note... Grant took that very transformer to church today, where the Pastor just happened to be talking about "transformation", and I was surprised how well Grant was listening to the sermon because each time he heard the word "transformation" his face lit up and he held up his toy and said (loudly) "tranformer?!"

More transforming... a very serious task... no smiling allowed.

Chow time!

My cousin's son Jestin and my mom

Joel, and his "bug" from Aunt Dar and Uncle Rick... the thing is crazy and crawls all over the floor like a little cockroach or something!

Thank you so much to everyone who came to help us celebrate! We had such fun spending time with all of you:)

Mike and Jenn

I had the fun task today of taking some engagement pictures for my brother and his fiance, Jenn. Aren't they cute!?!? We braved some seriously numb fingers and a few feet of snow in our backyard to get way back to the neighbors evergreens, not to mention the 15 minutes we had to work with before guests were arriving for Joel's birthday party, and got some seriously cute shots. This good-looking couple made it quite easy, though.

Serious

The boys had a this VERY serious task of painting the trains they got at Choo Choo Bob's train store. I just love how serious they become about tasks like this. There were no smiles cracked until the painting was complete. :)These trains are magnetic and the same size and shape as the "Thomas" trains, so they actually get to play with them just like their other trains.
Joel was NOT into letting me take his picture, apparently it disrupted his concentration.

Notice Grant's lower lip biting over the top lip, indicating a serious level of concentration:)

"Mom, we have a problem here!"

To quote Joel (referring to his hair) when he looked in the bathroom mirror this morning. After having a good chuckle, I replied, "Yes, honey, we do have a problem, and that's where mommy's water bottle and comb are going to come in handy".

Some serious bedhead, indeed:)

And, after a visit to mom's salon, much better!