Tuesday, January 24, 2012

Christmas and New Years

We had very good and quiet Christmas this year. We stayed home again this year...even though we were really getting the bug to go visit Utah! We decided to go in the summer when there is better weather and more family to see. Anyway, I did a terrible job of taking pictures of our actual Christmas. We were recording during it so I kind of forgot to take pictures. After we were through we realized that our video recorder wasn't recording most of the time, so we only have a few after the moment shots of the opening presents. Christmas Eve we went to the church and played games with Kelie’s family. They had a bunch of minute to minute games that we played in teams. It was a lot of fun. We then headed home and sang some Christmas songs with Brent playing the guitar and read the Christmas story in Luke.

Sunday morning we let Owen look through his stocking and then got ready for 9:00 church. After we came home I made some homemade blueberry muffins and we opened presents and just hung out the rest of the day. Owen loved all of his new puzzles and toys and Brent surprised me with a very pretty church dress that I didn’t expect because I had pretty much bought my own Christmas!

I have about 5 pictures of this pose and Owen has his eyes closed in every single one of them!

Singing Christmas songs
Looking at all the presents!
Christmas morning after church. Don't mind the chocolate all over his face!
Our sad attempt at taking a picture of all three of us
Watching the race cars at Bass Pro.
Driving the train
Daddy helping Owen to drive the RC car

Some of the aftermath of Christmas morning
Playing with the train. I was a little upset when we set up the train the night before because I thought it was motorized but it isn't. Owen had so many toys that he didn't play with the train for very long periods, but now he absolutely loves it.
Watching The Polar Express and eating popcorn with Dad
Gift exchange with Owen and the girls
I made these art smocks for the girls. They turned out so adorable!
Christmas pajamas!
All of the presents...he got a little spoiled.
For New Year's we went to Jon and Vanessa's and played our traditional present bingo game. I didn't get any pictures of the bingo game because I was more concerned about keeping Owen occupied and not knocking every one's card over!
This is the next afternoon reading Curious George
Owen really liked the connect 4 game.
Watching Cars 2 with Denisha.

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.