Tuesday, December 6, 2011

Owen at 2

I honestly can’t believe that two years have gone by since Owen was born. He has grown up so much in the last year. Here are some of the things I want to remember of him at 2 years.

• Owen and I play a game where he will say kiss and I am supposed to say, “Do you want to give me a kiss?” He will say, “No.” Then I say, “Then I will have to steal some.” I then proceed to chase him down and give him kisses. He loves it so much. He wants me to do it all day long.

• Some of my favorite phrases he says are, “you doing?” He will also say, “Daddy doing!” whenever he is being tickled or playing with Brent. "Oh Man!" has also hit the top of the list of recent phrases. Awesome, cute, milk, ucker(sucker), nepo (grape, I know it sounds just like it doesn’t it!),animal, puppy, Word World, train, plane, sleep, apter(helicopter), pillow and thank you are common words he loves to say. He pretty much will say anything you ask him to say. Some words are pretty good and others need a little work!

• Owen loves to watch the Mormon messages with me at lunch time. He loves to watch the ones that have primary songs and pictures. I must say it is a very good thing for both of us. He is starting to sing the words to “I am a child of God.” It is good for me to be reminded of these things myself, especially since he tests my limits sometime.

• He knows his numbers 1-10. He can recognize them if he sees them, but when counting random things he will say “two, sefen, eight, sefen, TEN!” He really emphasizes the ten. He is also learning the sounds of the letters (thank you, Word World and SuperWhy). I will often ask him what a word starts with and he always surprises me with how often he gets it right. He also knows basic shapes (circle, square, oval, rectangle, and triangle) and basic colors (red, blue, orange, green, white, black, yellow, and purple.

• His favorite foods right now are grapes, strawberries, green beans, grilled cheese, popcorn and pizza. He has decided he doesn’t like crust or peels and it wasn’t because I ever took it off before. He thinks most of what we eat is “icken” (chicken). I guess we must eat it a lot. He is doing better at eating than the past few months, but he is still pretty picky.

• Owen loves playing with the cars and the racer thing we got him for his birthday. He is also really into puzzles lately. We have done the ones we have a million times already.

• He is doing pretty good at folding him arms and bowing his head when we pray. We have been working on him “saying” prayers for meal and bedtime. He does pretty good sometimes and other times he just keeps saying, “ood”(food) and “amen.”

• He now loves to read books with us, although lately he has been really picky in which books he wants to read. I got him a bunch of books at the library the other day and he adamantly refused to read about half of them. I keep telling him not to judge a book by its cover but he still won’t look at them!

• I bought a step stool a few weeks ago and Owen loves it! He is always walking around the house asking where his stool is. He loves to use it to help me cook dinner, do the dishes, and put the laundry in the washer. He has become a good little helper the last couple of weeks.

• Owen sleeps on one of his blankets and uses his pillow pretty much as a blanket. He refuses to sleep on the pillow, but he insist it be in the crib.

Tuesday, November 22, 2011

Halloween 2011

Once again I am way behind in posting pictures, so now that it is almost Thanksgiving, I think I better post about halloween. We had a good halloween this year. We went to the church trunk or treat. Owen was a very cute lion. He loved having the hood on most of the time except when we were in the culture hall and it was so hot! He got mad at me if I tried to take it off of him any other time. On halloween we went to the Hearns center here in columbia for their carnival. It was pretty crazy, but it was still fun. We then went to a few neighbor houses and called it a night. Owen was so cute trying to say trick or treat and was pretty good at saying thank you. Here are some pictures of us carving pumpkins, going to the truck or treat, and going to the Hearnes center.
After a little coaxing Owen got into the pulling out of the guts.
Our finished pumpkins. I do have to say that Owen thought they were awesome when we went outside and lit them, but the next morning and for about 6 days after that he was terrified of the pumpkins and refused to go anywhere near the front door. After a while he got used to them and stopped being so afraid!
My cute little lion
The princess, the lion, and the candy giver.
Playing one of the games at the trunk or treat
He was being so funny in his seat and is actually happy in the picture, despite the pained look on his face.

Waiting to play a game at the Hearns center

Going down the big slide. This was by far Owen's favorite thing. He cried for about 5 minutes when we decided we didn't want to wait in line for another 10 minutes.

Tuesday, November 8, 2011

Owen's 2nd Birthday

I can't believe my baby turned two this last month! Time is just flying by. We decided to do a Mickey Mouse theme birthday party for him, since he absolutely loves "Nickey." I did these cute invitations, which was mostly for our family, but it was still fun to do.


Owen loved it and I had to make one just for him to play with

Mickey and Minnie ears for the little guests
Closer look at the cute bow!

All the girls modeling the Minnie mouse ears

Our Mouscatools for our mousca adventure. The kids had to play the games and get a picture clue to figure out where Owen's presents were hiding. I didn't get a picture but Brent was Toodles and brought the tools when they needed them.

Opening presents

Car racer for all his cars

I am going to admit that there have been times recently that I have been cursing myself for giving him so many because it seems I am always picking them up! Owen is however, a very good clean-up dude!

The cake that took me only about 12 hours to do. Kelie helped stack and frost the cake and I did the rest. I am pretty sure Brent will ban me from doing another cake for a while.

The back view

Side view

Waiting to blow out the candles

Taking one last picture before we cut all of Mom's work to pieces

Chocolate...yummy!

The girls being pretty silly. And yes, Jenna was posing this way. She knew I was going to take a picture and this is what she came up with.

Fishing for "Gooey" fish

The cupcake pinata that Owen picked out. He loves swinging that stick.

Brent decided he was going to have a little fun when we couldn't get it to break and rolled it off the roof a couple of times. If you look close you can see his toodles necklace.

Getting some candy

Our bean bag toss.

Playing with all the presents

The grown-ups playing a little Foosball

Reading one of his new books with his cousin



All the presents. One spoiled little boy. He loved all of it! I think he was the most excited about the mass amount of cars, but he plays with everything he got all the time.

Tuesday, November 1, 2011

Grandma comes to visit

My Mom came to watch Jenna and Brooke for a couple of days while Matt and Kelie went to New York. We had a good time with her while she was here. We played at the park, make cupcakes for our tea party, played on the swing set, went to the ward chili cook-off, read books, and while the kids were either at school or sleeping we made advent calendars for Christmas. Here are a few pictures that I took.


Owen and Brooke helping with the cupcakes


Reading with "Ammy"


Owen insists on looking at this book on his stomach and Grandma played along


Swinging

More Swinging

Our tea party

The best I could get of all three

Grammy and Owen and one little foot

So cute!


Good times

Advent calendar we worked on. The ornaments go in the pockets and you put one up every day.

Tuesday, October 25, 2011

Gulf Shore Beach

We decided that we wanted to go to the Ole Miss BYU game and because we were already so close to a beach we decided to turn it into a week-long vacation. Kelie and her friend had gone to the beach down in Gulf Shores and loved it, so we decided to go back to the same area. We rented a three bedroom condo and Marcie and Craig met us down there.

We headed to Memphis first and stayed the night then we went to the temple in the morning. The next day we drove to the game and Matt, Kelie, Jenna, and Brent went to the game. I decided I didn't want to pay for Owen and myself and then just end up walking around below the stadium because I knew Owen wouldn't sit still. I took Brooke and Owen to the hotel in Jackson, Mississippi. It was quite the adventure. Our hotel was a joke-will never stay in a La Quinta again. They gave us a non-smoking room that was clearly smoked in and then the other room they gave me had someone sleeping on the bed. Owen was not good in any sense of the word and so by the end of the night I was telling Brent he owed me big time!

The next morning we went to church in a little branch in Jackson. It was awesome. It was fast and testimony meeting and although there weren't very many people there, there was never a lull. Pretty much all of them were converts and kind of told how they came to join the church. I loved how personal it felt and how everyone was engaged in what the speakers were saying. I also loved that there were a few, uh huh's um hmm’s and a lot of head nodding. Glad we got to experience sacrament meeting in the South!


We drove the last four and a half hours to Orange Beach that afternoon. The weather was pretty bad since it there was a big tropical storm going on, but after that Monday, it cleared up and was beautiful the rest of the week. We had so much fun playing on the beach and hanging out with family. We will definitely have to go back.

Owen took a liking to Jenna reading him stories


Playing with his sand cars
Marcie and Kelie playing a game on the beach

Brent build a little "swimming pool" for the kids

SwimmingMatt built some pretty cool sand animals


More book reading

We went to the air museum in Pensacola

Stopped by this lighthouse that was right by the museum

Walking to the lighthouse

Owen didn't want to pose, he was more concerned about getting in the sprinkler

Brent dug out this ditch for the kids

Playing with our ginormous beach ball

Whale that Marcie and Matt built


Brent on the body board

Kelie on the body board

More playing

Jumping the waves

Burying their feet