The Rockin' Bowles Boys

Baby Girl

2012-01-05T18:33:00.000-08:00

I still need to do my New Year's Eve post, because we actually had a lot of fun, but my batteries died and I'm waiting for some of those pictures from Cristina's camera. And since we had our big ultrasound (complete with 3D pictures), I just can't wait anymore. I'm skipping on to post the baby girl pics and then I'll go back to New Year's. Between my camera issues and my computer issues of late, blogging is a bear! But, I'm trying to hang in there and get you at least some of the good stuff. All looked good. Heartbeat, bones, brain, kidneys, stomach, etc - all in their proper place and functioning well. Good news when all is healthy. So now, here is the girl child.

It was so fun to see the 3D ultrasound! It's the first time I've had one. She even yawned while it was in 3D mode and it was precious! Looks more like Ollie's skinny chin and nose to me, but I guess we'll see for sure when she's done baking. Now let's just hope that the hair is curly, too.

Goodbye 2011

2012-01-02T14:46:00.000-08:00

Since I've been a slacker and didn't send anyone Christmas cards or anything and have hardly kept up on the blog as good as I should, I am now going to do this year in review post. This is as good as it will get for this year. Goodbye to 2011! We've had a great year!

We have lived in this house for the whole of 2011. We've moved a lot in our still short married life and I believe that this is a first for us to not have moved at all in a year. We are so grateful to my parents for letting us live in their condo. The space is fabulous and the reduced rent they charge us is amazing!

Brian has been at school full time this year. He has worked so hard and rocked all of his semesters with A's and B's, including this most recent semester during which he had 21 credit hours! He was so busy, but we are so proud of how hard he's working in school. He also came up with the clever idea of posting a tutor ad on Craigslist and is doing so well making a little extra cash and helping people who are struggling with math and science. He really is a good tutor and likes it a lot. Brian was also released from the Young Men's presidency and moved to the 11 year old scout leader. The young men loved him so much and were so sad, but we're happy to be able to actually see him some now. And, I really needed an 11 year old scout leader so it's a double plus.

I am still serving as the 2nd counselor in the Primary presidency (over cub scouts, hence why Brian's calling was good for me, too). I feel like the one who is the biggest slacker out of all 4 of us, but I try my best and I love the kids and think that I do a pretty darn good job keeping the kids' attention when it's my turn for sharing time. The only thing new with me this year is that I went and got myself pregnant. I'm happily out of the icky stage and starting to finally catch back up on all the house work. Our third little one is due May 27, 2012 and it's a girl! We are happy to try out one of the other kind and are looking forward to her arrival. I'm also still busily trying to go through all of the random stuff of two families and organize it into a way that works for us.

Oliver has had a great year. He started preschool and loves it. He now goes Mon-Thur for 2 hours and even rides the school bus to and from preschool! He has his own ideas and suggestions and expresses them in fairly accurate complete sentences, even with correct grammer. He goes to the bathroom all by himself. He can put his shoes on alone. He's good to try doing a lot of things for himself. He is actually a very big helper to me with little tasks like moving the laundry along, unloading the dishwasher, or carrying groceries in from the car. He's sleeping much better at night, uses words more often, feeds himself fairly cleanly, and is just growing up into a full fledged grown up boy. He had his last year in nursery at Church and is starting 2012 as a Sunbeam, during which he did great yesterday.

Dexter has gone from a baby to a big boy during 2011. At the beginning of the year he was still wearing diapers full time, sleeping in a crib and talking very, very little. Now he only needs a diaper at night, decided he was too big to even take a nap, sleeps in a big boy bed, moved back into the upstairs room with his brother, and talks all the time. He has made huge verbal strides! He's gone from the baby who only said 10 or fewer words when 2011 started, to the big boy who speaks actual sentences and has a vocabulary of well over 100 words. We got Dexy into TLC this year and it has been so good for him. He has a speech therapist who comes to our house once a month and we have been doing Kindermusic once a week for the last couple of months. Both of these, along with having his brother going to preschool and leaving him to actually have to speak for himself, have turned Dexy into an all out talker. I'm so proud of him!

The other thing that was new in 2011 was that we got a couple of ferrets this year. We had 2, a white one named Frosty and a racoonish looking one named Chewie, but Frosty got sick and died. It was more sad than I thought it would be, seeing as we only had him a month or two before he passed away. Chewie is still with us and going strong. He puts up with the boys very well, and likes to get out of his cage and be curious about us and what we're doing. He loves to steal and hide plastic bags, small stuffed balls, and shoes.

We love being in the St. George sunny weather. We've had so much fun this year hiking the Dixie rocks, playing at the splashpad, being able to go to the park year round, and having a summer pass at Sand Hallow aquatic center. The boys and I have also loved story time Fridays at 11 AM at the city library this year. My parents sold us their Camry for a whole dollar before they moved to Nebraska this year and it has been a great second car. It's so nice for Brian to get where he needs to go and for the boys and I to still be able to get out of the house or run needed errands. Everyone has been fairly happy and healthy this year. Our only major issue this year was Dexy getting stitches back in July. We also got to go to Disneyland this year which was awesome, but you all know that because it just happened. We now say goodbye to 2011 and look forward to another great year in 2012!!!

Christmas

2012-01-01T17:59:00.000-08:00

Disneyland!!

2011-12-30T13:57:00.001-08:00

OK. So it has been very hard as of late to blog. Having my camera stop working, then borrowing someone's super old camera, Dexy lost our big memory card, my computer starts throwing fits every time I try to work with the pictures folders, and blogger has been disliking me recently on top of all of it. That is why my posts have been so few and far between. But, here are the pictures from Disneyland. I put a lot on Facebook, but here's some here too just in case. Brian's parents got everyone a 3 day park hopper pass for Christmas this year. It was such a super awesome present!! We wouldn't have been going to Disneyland for quite some time if it wasn't for them. The boys loved it! Everything was amazing and exciting!! I threw a little fit a time or two when I had to miss out on my favorite rides because I'm pregnant (still never been on the Matterhorn and always sad about missing out on Space Mountain and Indiana Jones), but besides my crabby attitude moments, it was all good. The boys did have some crabby moments, too. We had a great, fabulous time!!

Yay!! Walking into Disneyland! It was so exciting. Only my third time and, of course, the first for the boys.

The Little Mermaid ride; one of Dexy's favorites. He asked to go on it again by name the next day.

Stellar! Bug's Life 3D show. Ollie's not really a fan. He wouldn't keep the glasses on.

Dexy rocked the glasses and loved the show.

The Heimlich Chew Chew Train; Oliver's favorite. We rode this one a good 3 times.

Splash Mountain; Dexy was an inch too short :( But it was Oliver's other favorite, again with multiple rides.

This is a new ride down in California Adventure and it is so much fun! A new favorite for Brian and I.

You wear 3D glasses and pull the string on this 'popper gun' to shoot things. Much fun!

Ollie didn't way love the dark and semi-scariness of Buzz Astro Blasters, but he was brave.

Now Dexy did love shooting all the aliens; his other favorite ride.

Awww!! They're so precious!

Small World Christmas style was so festive and cute! Dexy was staring in amazement. Unfortunately, Ollie fell asleep in line and missed it.

Plumb worn out on the last night. We stayed in the park til at least 10 the first 2 nights and pushed it all the way til close at midnight the last night. They happily climbed into bed together and were almost instantly asleep. So much fun!!!

Leaves!!

2011-12-12T15:00:00.000-08:00

OK. All caught up. At least for now. This was Friday evening. We had been in the house for a while, so we headed outside to check the mail. On our way back, we found a gianormous amount of fallen leaves up again the wall of our condo complex. The boys asked if they could play in them and I said, "YES!! Let's play!"

We started fairly innocently with leaf throwing, crawling through them, and sitting in them.

Then running and jumping into them from the ground. Then I gathered them all up into a corner of the wall and we moved to jumping off the wall into the leaves. Ollie ran inside and got a little chair, which he hauled all the way back outside to us, so they could climb up on the wall by themselves. That left me free to continuously fix the leaf pile, making it suitable for big time wall jumping fun!

At which point, Ollie did this! A head first dive, off the wall, into the massive leaf mountain! It was brilliant!! But by then, it was unfortunately getting dark and it was time for us to stop playing. Good thing we had a ward Christmas dinner to go to that night or I don't think I could have convinced them to stop.

Christmas Cookies

2011-12-12T14:59:00.000-08:00

A few days ago, Cristina made dough and colored sugar sprinkles and then brought them over to our house after Ollie got home from preschool. The boys loved rolled out the dough, picking a cookie cutter to use and cutting out all sorts of Christmas shapes. After they baked and cooled, they even got to frost and decorate them. Dexy and Jude were all about just getting some frosting on their cookie and eating it asap. Ollie, on the other hand, needed to not only frost it with a mountain of frosting, but pile on the sprinkles before he would get to eating his. I love Christmas sugar cookies!

My Helper Boys

2011-12-12T14:50:00.000-08:00

My boys are so nice and helpful. They especially love helping me make dinner. So, I put them to work. This night we were making delicious, coconut milk shrimp. I love the smell of it when it's simmering! Ollie peeled basically that entire butternut squash by himself. It was awesome! And then Dex, taking a break from his stirring, chomped down on several pieces of raw squash. He said he liked it! You go, boys!!

Sand Dunes

2011-12-12T14:36:00.000-08:00

OK. Here's more catch up. Way back in November, we seriously piled everyone into my car (with Derek and Cristina in the trunk - don't tell anyone), so we could pay only $6 and get into Snow Canyon State Park. We went to the sand dunes and had a GREAT time!

The kids happily played for a good couple of hours. And so did the adults. It was well worth the 6 bucks. We got to roll, jump, dig, bury, and plow in the sand. We really need to go do it again!

Jubilee of Trees

2011-12-07T18:04:00.000-08:00

I haven't blogged in forever. Sorry. I've been having computer, camera, and energy issues. So here's my first catch up installment. We went to the Jubilee of Trees a little while ago. The boys loved seeing all the Christmas trees. I wanted to go and I knew that Cristina wanted to go, but we didn't actually plan to go together. But, as luck would have it (and kid's schedules), we ended up there at the same time! The boys loved the tree with the train that went around it. They sat there and stared at it forever. We saw trees, played bells, took Christmas pictures, ate a little treat or two and watched the dancers that were performing. We ended up being there for A LOT longer than I thought we would. The dancers right at the end really helped hold their attention for another 30 minutes or so. It was fun and got us in the holiday spirit!

Making Slime

2011-11-16T15:36:00.000-08:00

A couple days after Halloween, we got together for more 'Octoberish' fun by making slime. After jumping off the outside wall several times, we finally convinced them to come in and give the actual activity a try. It's just white school glue, water, and Borax, but you have to add it in a certain order. It made actual, real slime. Pretty cool!

Halloween!

2011-11-16T14:49:00.000-08:00

I'm really suppose to be cleaning the kitchen, so I am of course blogging. I decided that this is a least a somewhat productive form of procrastination. And since I haven't blogged in forever and never got around to the actual Halloween day, here it is. We had a super fun Halloween. Everyone got all decked out and then we took the kids to the carnival at the library first.

They had all kinds of fun games that earned them tickets, which we traded for prizes when we were done.

Dexy, the blue crayon. Did you expect anything else from my blue obsessed boy?

Ollie was a purple crayon, Jude an aviator, and Alice a ballerina. They all looked so adorable.

Even face painting was a part of the fun.

Then onto more games!

Soon the grown-ups....

.....and the baby decided to take a stab at the fun as well.

Then we came back to our house for a quick mac 'n cheese dinner before heading back out to do the actual, door to door trick or treating. The boys got the point of it this year and were really enjoying the activity.

The Stielme's house was the best! Look at them all into the Halloween spirit!

Even Alice, who was quite the trooper through a long day of lots of activity, seemed to be having fun.

It was a good time! We cetainly did enjoy Halloween to it's fullest this year.

Halloween Carnival at Tati's School

2011-11-02T16:35:00.000-07:00

We tag along for fun things that Jude gets to do with his Tati (Grandma Leslie) sometimes and we got invited to tag along again at her school's Halloween carnival. It was lots of good fun; a train, bouncy houses, swings, nachos and cotton candy! It was very dark when we finally dragged them away. They were wiped by the time we were finished.

Tie Dye Pumpkins

2011-11-02T16:12:00.000-07:00

The boys went up North with Brian for a couple days so that he could do the Thanksgiving Point Halloween golf tournament with his dad and they were carving pumpkins up there, so we decided not to do that this year. We decided to tie dye pumpkins instead and it was so much fun and the shirts turned out so cute! We went to Cristina's house on Monday and did the dying for FHE.

Then she brought the shirts over to our house the next afternoon and we drew the faces and other fun Halloween related things onto our 'pumpkins.' It worked so well and they all turned out so precious that I'ved decided we should tie dye a shirt for every holiday!

The Big 30!

2011-11-02T15:50:00.000-07:00

On October 18th, (I know, behind again) I turned 30. It has come. But really, nothing is different. I took my family to Menchie's for my birthday and then we celebrated with cake and Derek's family the next day. I made myself this delicious sponge cake. Cristina decorated it for me, gangsta style.

Blowing out my 3 whole candles. We decided to play it safe and just did one candle per decade.

I filled this bad boy with whipped cream and Nutella, which was Cristina's fabulous idea. It was so delightful! We couldn't wait for it to cool, though, so it was drippy. Didn't matter. Still SO GOOD!

Down on the Farm

2011-10-26T14:48:00.000-07:00

On the 15th (I know, I'm behind), we took the kids down to a farm for a little activity they were having. There was handprint painting on horses, a petting zoo, frog hopping races, face painting, and lots of stinky farm fun. OK. Just being a stinker. We really had an enjoyable time. The boys' favorite activity? Climbing on this ricketty, collapsing fence. Of course!

Vegas, Baby!

2011-10-17T10:09:00.000-07:00

Brian and I had our 5th anniversary on Wednesday Oct. 12th. We've made it to the first milestone, happily and well. So, we decided to go to Vegas. Brian's parents and sister came down on Thursday evening. We left Derek and Cristina with the boys until they got here and took off at about 4ish. We checked into our room at Palace Station hotel, got our free dinner buffet that came with our package and then headed down to Las Vegas Blvd. We loved the Venetian (where we found that big, beautiful waterfall) and spent a lot of time in there just looking at all the amazing stuff, eating gelato, watching people get gondola rides and enjoying the beauty of their work. Then we headed on down the street, stopped at the Sugar Factory where we wished we could see the boys' faces of sheer joy, wandered through more amazing hotels, and watched the beautiful Bellagio fountains. At about 11 (we know, when the rest of the party was just getting started) we were tired of walking and headed back to our hotel room. We watched the movie "The Help" and then went peacefully to bed knowing that no one would be waking us up in the middle of the night. In the morning, we slept in (so nice), checked out, went to the Ethel M Chocolate Factory, and then to old Vegas on Freemont Street. I wish we could have been there at night! It would have been so fun with all the old signs, like the classic cowboy, all lit up. Not to mention the fact that they closed the street off, paved it, and covered it with a light canopy! Next time I guess. Then we quickly went to the other side of the Blvd which we didn't get to the first night to go to M&M World and the Coke Store. We paid a measly 7 dollars for all of those Coke products from around the world. Majority of them weren't very good (those all ended up on the tray in front of me), but a few were quite yummy. We then booked it home because we had told Grandma and Grandpa to keep the boys up so we could see them before they went to bed. We made it back about 9. The boys were excited to see us and to tell us all about the 1 1/2 day party they had been having themselves. They had gone to Menchie's, McDonald's, story time at the library with Angela, Costco where they got berry smoothies, Cafe' Rio, the park, and had just generally been given whatever they wanted. Which, afterall, is the grandparents' job! They behaved well and still traded their tokens for chocolate milk and shows though, so it was a perfectly fun and acceptable party time for them, too! When we finally got them to settle down and go to bed it was about 10:30. Then they konked out fast, though. It was a fun time for all involved!!

Taste of Dixie Festival

2011-10-17T09:51:00.000-07:00

St. George is a cool city. They do fun things for the community. A couple of weekends ago they had the Taste of Dixie Festival down at Vernon Worthen park. There were booths for all different kinds of foods that you could buy. But then becuase they are awesome, there were a couple of bouncy houses, a little train, and a small set of carnival swings that you could do for FREE! We love free! The boys had a great time. You could also get balloon animals and a picture for free as well as wander around a whole bunch of other fun booths. We spent a couple of hours there. It was a beautiful day and a great activity. This city really rocks!

Dexy's Artwork

2011-10-10T15:35:00.000-07:00

Dexy is really quite artistic. He is 2 years old and he drew these faces all by himself.

He started by drawing big circles and then asking me to draw eyes. Then a nose and a mouth. He watched a few times. Then he did these all on his own. He even added the lines for the neck and some hair. I think he's talented.

I'm So Proud

2011-10-04T14:41:00.000-07:00

My Harry Potter obsession is being successfully transfered to the next generation!

We started talking about Halloween costume options, when Ollie informed me that he wanted to be Harry Potter. Then he changed his mind to Ron Weasley. That's my boy!

I pulled out the robe that I made for our big Harry Potter party and let him wear it. It was much too big, but he loved it so much! He started twirling all around in it, slipping on it's extra length, and then hopping up to do it all over again.

He was a very happy boy. I guess that I will have to make him one now, too.

I'm so proud!

Ollie Rides the School Bus

2011-10-04T14:38:00.000-07:00

And he loves it! He was very scared the first time that he got on it, but ever since then he's so excited when it pulls up for him. This is the only picture I've been able to get because he always just runs right onto it as soon as he can. He's getting to be such a big boy!

They Really Needed a Snack

2011-10-04T14:34:00.000-07:00

So they helped themselves to the bag of carrots. The big ones! Ollie ate an entire large carrot.

See? They were all about this size. Dexy even ate more than I thought he would.
Yummy! I'm so well pleased in the healthy snack choice that they made all on their own!

Mud!

2011-10-04T14:31:00.000-07:00

My boys really like playing in the dirt at the side of our condo. And one day when Jude was here, they decided to introduce him to the fun.

Except for it was kind of wet that morning so it wasn't just dirt.

Look at all that mud! I guess it's very true what they say; boys will be boys!

Pottermore

2011-09-16T14:22:00.000-07:00

Well, here is the proof that I got my Pottermore early access email! Yay!! It opens to all in October, but some of us (the nutcase fans who answered the clues for a one week only period) get in early to help beta test the site. Yes. I am one of those fans! I got a little distracted, though, buying my school supplies, having my wand pick me (Elm, phoenix feather core, 10 3/4 inches, unyielding), and getting sorted (Ravenclaw - woot woot!) that my other responsiblities slacked a little.

But have now worries, I pulled myself away after not that long and got back to real life, including a super fun trip to a park by Cristina with Jude and Alice....

...and getting my kitchen cleaned and dinner made. Today when I tried to get in however, they were updating it. Good thing. Although, I'm sure I can find other ways to procrastinate!

More "Magic Carpet" Madness

2011-09-16T14:10:00.000-07:00

These Boys!

2011-09-16T13:48:00.000-07:00

Last night the boys were very hyper, so Brian decided to get them playing. They invented this new game that is now Ollie's favorite. Brian was calling it a magic carpet ride. They got really crazy! It was pretty funny to witness.

We Don't Need a Nap, Mom! Honest!

2011-09-16T13:39:00.000-07:00

Weeee!

2011-09-16T09:55:00.000-07:00

St. George has installed a classic carousel downtown, right by the library and the slpashpad. It is so pretty and I love the old-fashioned charm it gives to this town. The first time we went, Oliver decided he was too scared to try it. But we went again and he was a big, brave dog and went for a ride! Now he loves it! Jude and Dexy were fans right from the start. It's a good, inexpensive activity. And now that I'm posting this, Ollie is even climbing all over me saying, "I want to go on the carousel so badly!"

Cute and Naughty

2011-09-12T16:57:00.000-07:00

Last time I blogged, I heard Dexy get quiet. I was almost finished with my last post, so I just finished up before coming down. It wasn't very long, but when I came down I found Dexy sitting on the kitchen counter. He had pulled over a chair, climbed up, turned the water on, plugged the sink, and was having a grand old time making lake kitchenanooga. He's so cute and so cheeky!

One day Dexy hauled all of his pillows, blankets, and friends into my room and up onto my bed. Then he climbed up and got himself comfy and called for me. I came in to find him so adorably snuggled on my bed, that when he asked to watch a show I just couldn't resist.

He had pulled his blankets up over him when I brought in his drink that he had so politely asked for. He's just so precious!

Wiped! We didn't really even do anything all that tiring this day, but for some reason they were both just flopped all over. Ollie fell asleep like that!

Dexy wanted to wrestle. Ollie, not so much this time around.

The boys were being quiet so I went to see what they were up to. They weren't anywhere in the house. I found them here, sitting on top of the car!

And Dexy was even pants-less! See?!? Cute and naughty.

Oliver's First Day of Preschool

2011-09-06T18:35:00.001-07:00

Oliver's first day of preschool was on August 29th. He was so excited to be going back. He got to go last year, but only for a month or so. This is his first real year. I was happy to have him going back, too! He attends Monday through Thursday, 11:20-1:20. Here we are on our way there. Yay!

Dexy was all chill! He likes his brother going to preschool as well. We get some nice, quiet, Mommy/Dexy time.

Ollie with his teacher, Ms. Kat. He seems to really like her. But he was too distracted for the first picture.

Oh, there he is!! We're so proud of our big boy. He is growing up very much. And crazy FYI: when I typed in this title, he looked at it and said, "did you type Oliver's first day of preschool?" What?!? Why yes! Yes I did! I have no idea how he knew that because I didn't say anything before or while I was typing it. His only clue could have been the pictures, and that's still pretty genius if you ask me!

Last Week's Dinner Menu

2011-09-06T18:28:00.000-07:00

It was kind of an off week for me.
(Cristina's hilarious joke. Laughed so hard!)

The Boys' New Fetish

2011-09-06T18:24:00.000-07:00

Colored Eggs!!!
Whatever gets them to eat breakfast, right?!

How We Spent our Summer

2011-09-01T08:55:00.000-07:00

The "blue waterslide' was a big hit this summer! We bought a summer pass at Sand Hallow Aquatic Center for all 4 of us for only $100. It was well worth it!

Storytime at the library on Friday mornings. Love love love! We'd meet Cristina and kids there and then almost always followed that up with....

...the splashpad! Another fabulous activity!

The last activity of choice, our usual fall back, was to play in Cristina's backyard. If we needed an activity it was usually one of these 4. What a fun way to spend our summer!

FYI - I made these gifs at gifninja.com I'm very excited about them!

Dexy Talking

2011-08-31T17:56:00.000-07:00

Dexy is becoming such a talker! I love hearing him try to say EVERYTHING!
I don't know what 'monnanotto' means. Ollie's a goof!

We call underwear "chonies" because someone on Brian's mission called them that. And one day when Dexy and Jude were here doing good pottying, I randomly called them a "chonie hero." Then Brian picked it up later and started singing chonie hero to tune of "Jukebox Hero." The boys love it now!! Dexy even tries to sing it and it's so precious. He's just doing such good talking. It makes me so happy!

Catching up with Brian's Past

2011-08-31T16:22:00.000-07:00

Brian's Madrigals partner and some of their other friends from the group were all going to be in or around St. George on the same weekend, so they decided to all get together and catch up. We met at the splashpad to let the kids play while the grown-ups chatted. I must admit, I did tons more playing than chatting. I figured Brian knew them better and needed to talk more than I did. Brian's partner is named Melanie and her little girl, Lydia, was so cute! She was shy at first, but when I reached out to her, she decided that we could be best friends! Ollie knew a cute girl when he saw one and wanted to hold her hand and come play with us. They were being so precious. We played for a while before heading back to our house for homemade pizza, salad, cantalope, and dessert pizza.

The kids played really well together. And it was fun to get to know some of Brian's buddies better. We only snapped a couple of pictures and all the kids sat relatively still and we actually got pictures. We were impressed. Oh and see? Lydia decided that she needed to sit on my lap. I feel so special! This was Melanie and her husband and 2 little girls, Brian and I and our 2 boys, Nina and her little boy and baby girl (her husband couldn't make it) and Meredith and her husband and little girl and baby boy. Fun!

Ollie and Lydia had one last chance to play as her family started to head out. They were closing each other in this outside door and calling it their cage. I'm pretty sure Ollie came up with this idea! It was nice to have a get together!

"No baby. Dig booy!"

2011-08-24T12:46:00.000-07:00

When you ask Dexy if he's a baby he says, "No baby. Dig booy!" And he would be right. He is becoming such a big boy. The boy boys are both being very much "all boy" lately and are insisting to me that they are all grown up.

Doing such things as filling their dirty trike buckets with Goldfish and then eating from them....

....and heading outside first thing in the morning in their jammies and undies....

...to dig in the dirt...

...and make a huge mess!!

Dexy has also been using the potty and wearing undies like a big boy. We are having a lot of accidents, but that's just the name of the game and he is now too grown up to wear diapers except at night.

Ollie is getting so big that he was exploding out of these 3T sized jammies. Dexy actually usually wears these, but Ollie's jammie drawer was empty, so Brian put him in these one night. This pair is actually pretty much too small for either of them. They are just getting so big!

Sometimes, though, they still do things to remind me that they aren't all grown up yet. Like this! Dexy made a huge fabric mountain one day that consisted of a entire laundry basket of clean folded laundry, a bin of cloth diapers, a bag of clean folded laundry that I hadn't unpacked yet from our trip up North, all of the bedding and pillows from off our bed, and half of the contents of my night stand drawer! So frustrating!! I was proud of how calm I remained inspite of wanting to tear my hair out. They are certainly getting big and independent!

According to Oliver

2011-08-21T16:41:00.000-07:00

Here is the rest of our time up North, after the massive head injury, from Oliver's perspective. He took all of these pictures. He's actually getting pretty good. There are even people in the shots now! It might be one of the only ways I get to be in pictures, so that's good. After the stitches, everything went fairly smoothly and was fun. We jumped on the tramp and enjoyed the not so burning hot weather a lot and that was about it. Glad to visit and have a good time with family. Glad to be home again now.

What Dexy Has to Say About it All

2011-08-12T18:17:00.000-07:00

Family "Vacation" Part III

2011-08-12T15:34:00.000-07:00

WARNING: Graphic pictures! If you are squeemish (as I am, but you'll hear more about that later), you may not want to look to closely at the following pictures.

So, here is Part III of our vacation time. On Wednesday morning, we all got up, ate breakfast, and got ready to head back down to the lake. Everyone wanted to do more water skiing and knee boarding first while the water was still calm, so we let them all go while Grandma and I stayed on shore with the boys. We set the food up on the picnic tables and sunscreened up and were just letting the boys play around on the grass while we waited and waited for our turn. Then things turned way less relaxed and enjoyable. Dexy was scampering around and stumbled into one of the picnic tables. He hit it full on, right on the corner of the bench, full in his face. I walked over to pick him up, staying calm knowing that it was probably going to be a pretty bad bump. I lifted him from off his face and flipped him over to take a look at it. I didn't have to look very hard. He was gushing blood from above his right eye! I will never forget flipping him over and seeing basically his whole face covered with blood!

I instantly headed off toward the bathroom. I washed off his face as much as I could, but the blood just kept coming and coming, so I grabbed a bunch of paper towel and started trying to apply pressure to the wound. Grandma had gone into the little store to get some ice, so I went there to tell her that we probably needed to take him to the hospital for stitches. We went into the store and I sat Dexy down on the counter. I pulled the paper towels away to see if the bleeding had slowed at all. BIG MISTAKE! I got a good look into his very deep and bloody wound, felt woozy, decided to rest my head on my arm and then woke up in a fight of terror on the hard floor a few minutes later.

Yes. I totally passed out! I am a huge sissy, especially when it comes to my babies gushing blood. I just remember putting my head down and then I was thrashing around on a hard floor and I didn't know really where I was and Dexy was screaming and screaming and screaming from really far away. Then a man's face calmly asking me my name came into focus. He was a fire fighter for the state park. We owe him so much!! He asked me my name, if I knew where I was, the day of the week and who the president is. When I got all those questions correct, he asked if I hurt anywhere. Fortunately, the answer to that was "no." I was standing next to Grandma and she said that I fell into her first and she broke my fall. I would have just gone straight back and hit hard if I hadn't fallen her direction.

After quickly and calmly assessing that I was OK, the fire fighter turned to Dexy. He got the girl working in the store to bring him and first aide kit and wrapped Dexy's head. Dexy would do nothing but sit by me and scream. I could do nothing but lay on the hard ground and shake. Ollie was so amazingly calm! He kept coming up to me saying things like, "it's OK, Mommy" "you're alright" and "I will give you a kiss." Grandma had called the cell phone of everyone on the boat about 5 times, but we weren't being able to get a hold of anyone. Again, fire fighter man to the rescue (I'm very sad now that I don't even know his name)! He told the girl who works there to go take one of the jet skies out and try to flag down our boat. He stayed with us and got some jackets to put over me because I was freezing. Dexy wouldn't even let Grandma hold him. Ollie got free ice cream!

The girl finally found our boat and soon Brian and Grandpa came walking over me into the store (I was basically laying in the entire entery). Dexy would go to Brian and kind of started to settle down. Brian took Dexy to the suburban and Grandpa had to carry me (I know, I'm pathetic).
We headed down the canyon to go to the ER.

The fire fighter had told Brian to keep Dexy awake just in case, so Brian was doing all that he could to keep him up. He actually got Dexy laughing! Here he is on the ride to the hospital, all bandaged up and looking rough and tumble! We only had Grandma's cell phone camera so the pictures aren't great, but probably a little blurry is better in this case anyway. On the way down the canyon, I vomitted. You probably all didn't want to know that. I was already woozy and I get motion sick really bad, so there really wasn't any chance that I wouldn't toss my cookies. However, I started feeling better from that point on.

Here it is. The gash! This is what made me pass out. This is at the ER after they had removed the bandage.

WICKED!! Poor kid! We all, sadistically, are a little jealous of the location of his injury. It's going to leave stellar scar, like Scar the lion from Lion King or Aniken Skywalker before he became Darth Vadar. I just hope that doesn't mean that he'll turn bad. He's way too sweet to ever turn bad!

Then they wrapped him up like a burrito in this little papoose to clean and stitch the wound. At this point, they sent me out of the room. They all knew that I had passed out and told me to go wait in the waiting room. Fair enough. Probably for the best. Brian said that he cried while they gave him the shot and was torturously calling, "Daddy?! Daddy?!?" but then he was fine. He even fell asleep while they were stitching him! He handled it so well. They were all impressed! What a brave boy!!

Family "Vacation" Part II

2011-08-11T21:49:00.001-07:00

Part II - Boating Fun! Since we were unable to make it up here for the annual 4th of July East Canyon whole Bowles' family boating extravaganza (Brian couldn't miss classes), Brian's parents planned that while we were up here this time around, they'd take us boating at East Canyon for a couple of days. Glad they didn't want us to miss out on the fun!

I have participated in basically no water sports throughout my life, so it's fun to have a chance to go out and play big on the water. I got up on water skies about 4 or 5 times, but just kept wiping out when I couldn't find the right balance. I ditched the skies and went for the knee board and not only got up, but went the whole length of the lake before biffing it! I much prefer the knee board! After the big kids were all done skiing and boarding and the little kids had awakened from their boat nap, we took the boys out on the tube.

Ollie thought it was a riot!! He was laughing and screaming and bouncing all around. Dexy, however, just rode with an expressionless face. We kept asking him if he liked it and he just kept saying, "ya" again with very little emotion. So we'd ask him if he wanted to go back to the boat and he'd say, "no." Guess he liked it. When he did get tired, we sent Dex back to the boat and took Ollie a little longer on a faster more wild ride. He thought it was great! Then he even went with Angela and I on yet another tube ride.

Then it was time for a break and a short swim with me in the somewhat chilly water.

After that, they chilled on the boat while Angela and I went on the craziest, more wild tube ride ever!!

What a cheese!

Then it was Brian's turn to get up on the skies. He had been off in a little cove fishing (his new obsession) when we had gotten out the board and the skies the first time, so he still needed a turn. He has been going up to East Canyon at least once a year for basically his whole life, so he is much better than I am.

He sped across the water for a long time and was even jumping back and forth in and out and over the wake. It was awesome!

Last year when we were at East Canyon for the July 4th celeberation, Ollie was all about driving the boat. When Grandma asked him this time if he wanted to drive, he wasn't too interested. Dexy was, though! His year to be the driver!

As the day rounded to a close, the boys went on one last tube ride with Ben and Amanda. It was a short ride because the boat started dragging, but they still loved it. They were all about the tube!! Then we headed back to the condo that we were staying in for yummy dinner and bath and bedtime for happy, tired boys. We had a super enjoyable day on the lake!! That was Tuesday. Yesterday, however, was a doozy!!! But that is a story for tomorrow's part III post. I need to go to bed now. But I will just leave you with this little cliff hanger - that story involves more than one person turfing it, hard!!

Family "Vacation" Part I

2011-08-11T17:31:00.000-07:00

Brian's summer semester has ended and he has a couple weeks before fall semester starts, so we decided to squeeze in a little vacation of sorts. We came up north to spend a week with his family, including a family boating trip up at East Canyon for a couple days in the middle. Here's the first event on the vaca agenda. We packed up and headed up on Saturday afternoon. The boys were so cute all ready to go. Love Dexy's cheeser face! Since we were just going to be in the car, we didn't even change out of our jammies after a morning of me cleaning to get everything ready. We got up here Saturday evening.
The first event was the blessing of Julian Weiler. He is the first child of Brian's basically life long best friend, Dan. They have been friends since 1st grade so, naturally, Dan wanted Brian at his son's blessing. Sad part was that our boys would not sleep that first night that we got here, so making it to Church on time was a huge ordeal and we actually missed the blessing! I felt so bad, but they understood and were just happy to have us there.

We joined in at what Brian refers to as "meets and sweets" at their apartment after the blessing. It was yummy food! I just wanted to keep eating and eating. Julian is getting big and is very cute.

We had a very fun time being with old friends that we don't get to see too often. The boys were very good to entertain themselves and be happy to be there.

Glad we got to take part, at least kind of, in Julian's speacial day!

Harry Potter Party!

2011-08-07T22:17:00.000-07:00

AAAHHHHHH! I haven't posted in forever. What have I been doing? I haven't even posted about our amazing Harry Potter party and it was weeks ago! I think that when I posted these pictures on facebook, I felt like I had taken care of it, but I need them here, too. So here it is, finally. It was the party of the century! The pictures are good, but they don't do it justice. The feel of the whole thing really was magical.

My mom, Cristina and I got up to Angela's house on Wednesday night. One of the first things I was desperate to see was the tickets. We had 34 people from the party joining us at the midnight showing of the final movie. We took up the whole back row! When Angela pulled out all the tickets, I almost lost it! It was a great way to really get both my excitment and my obsession going. Look at all those tickets!

Then she pulled out the bin of goodies! They had worked so hard and made so many amazing things. We talked about final party plans and headed to bed.
The next morning, we got up and the work began. We set up house tables, quidditch, Ollivander's, King's Cross station, everything.

It took all morning and I ended up with a sunburn. It was so fun to see it all come together.

Here it is. The sorting station.

The Forbidden Forest.

The Pensive.

Chocolate frogs, painstackingly made by Wendy and Angela. They were so cute!

The rest of the goodies, including such wonderful things as a licorice wands, cauldron cakes, every flavor beans, pumpkin pasties, Irish bread, and an awesome snitch cake!

The house tables.

The Quibbler and Specterspecs, made by my clever sister-in-law Cristina. We gave them together as one of the prizes.

Ollivander's Wand Shop.

The prize table with potions, wands, treats from Honeydukes, and Weasley's Wizard Whezes.

Kings Cross Station, complete with bricks that you had to pass through to get onto Platform 9 3/4; Cristina's and Amanda's combinded genius. It looked AMAZING! Then the guests started arriving.

Including Harry Potter himself. Crisitina had a great, mad idea to go get a cardboard cut-out of Harry. It turned out to be one fun addition to the party.

Then it was time to take to the skies! Just taking a lap around the Quidditch Pitch! Again, Cristina's clever idea to lay and the ground to take these pictures to catch us flying!

They are epic pictures! I love how Cristina kind of looks like a crazy, little kid witch riding a broom for the first time.

Angela taking her turn. Some of the best pictures ever!

They had even made little sacks so the dogs could be dressed up as house elves.

As it got dark, the Goblet of Fire started to burn blue and threw out the names of the prize winners. Or in other words, I hid behind it and pitched the names out while hoping that they didn't fall into the fire for real. It was so fun!

I can't even believe how brilliant everything was and how magical it all became. After the prizes we pulled down the big screen that we had put on the side of the house and started watching Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1, seeing as it was totally dark now and we were all getting excited.

At the part where they fight the Death Eaters in the cafe', Wade lite some fireworks and Angela set off the dark mark that she had made basically like a giant light brite. So clever!

Finally it was time to go to the theater. The party was awesome, but now we were anxious to see the new movie. Cristina and Brian's hilarious cousin, Laurie, had the mad idea to bring Harry with us to the cinema. We stuffed him in the car and rocked out to the wizard rock CD's I had complied for our party's playlist.

Harry ended up sticking out the sunroof as we turned onto the street of the theater. We couldn't stop laughing! We took him in and took some pictures with other awesome fans that had dressed up and then took Harry back to the car before finding our seats. After an incredibly long wait for only 15 minutes, the movie started and it was fabulous. It was all so brilliant! I'm sad that it's all over now and am having Harry Potter withdrawal.

Quail Lake

2011-07-11T14:52:00.000-07:00

On Saturday, we went with Derek and Cristina's family to Quail Lake. We were there for about an hour and it was so fabulous! It was great fun to drive a mear 15 minutes to park for free by a lake and go in and play! This is a beautiful place. I love living in St. George because of opportunities like this.

The kids loved playing and splashing in the water, which was actually very blue. Brain even came up with a great game where someone would throw his hat and then we'd "swim" the boys in a race to be the first to get the hat. They thought that was the best thing ever. It was hard for me, though, because my flip flops kept ripping apart. I guess it's time for water shoes. It was still so much fun, even with shoes that wouldn't hold together. We ended our time with some good old rock "skipping." I actually skipped one rock 7 times! That's a huge skipping stone record for me! The boys just threw them with a kur-plunk into the lake, but still loved it! Maybe it's because they choose huge rocks like that one Ollie is holding. He, he! Good times!

Happy 4th of July!

2011-07-08T13:33:00.000-07:00

We had a really fun, small 4th this year. In the late morning, we met Derek's family up at the red rocks to hike around and enjoy the outdoors.

It was super muggy, but we had an OK time anyway. The boys always love being outside, getting to climb, throw rocks and play in the dirt.

Then we went back to our own homes for lunch and naps, but after naptime, the celebrating resumed. We had delicious roast beef sandwhichs for dinner and then set off smokes bombs....

....and poppers. The boys loved both of those! They were so in awe at the colored smoke and had a great time throwing the poppers.

As Brian watched the fun from the wall, both boys had to climb up to sit by him and be big.

Cute, huh?!

He was even joined by Alice who LOVES her Uncle Brian. Again, so cute!

Then root beer floats.

A 4th of July must!

After deliciously sticky root beers floats, we bathed the kids and got them all ready for bed knowing that we'd be up late shooting fireworks. We headed over to Dixie High School's parking lot to set off the big ones.

The kids all did a good job watching and enjoying rather than being scared.

OOOHHHH! AAAHHHH!

Even Alice was pleasant as she watched from the stroller. There were a few other groups of people there setting off fireworks. One group even had several aireals that were pretty sweet! From our postion, we took see fireworks going off everywhere. The whole town had lite up now that aireals are legal. It was brilliant!!

We even did the traditional tribal fire dance around the strobes like my dad taught us to do! Dexy was so funny running around it!

Playing With the Ferrets

2011-07-03T19:49:00.000-07:00

Here are some super excited videos of the boys playing with their new ferret friends.

The Newest Members of our Family

2011-07-03T19:47:00.000-07:00

We are now the owners of 2 ferrets. Brian has been DYING to get the boys a pet. We can't have dogs in our condo complex. Neither one of us love cats. Fish are boring. It was looking like there wasn't going to be any pets for us. Plus, I've been resistant. More for me to clean up after and care for. Plus the cost that we couldn't afford. But Brian came across an ad on Craiglist. A young lady was moving and couldn't take her ferrets with her.

She was giving them away to a good home for FREE! Ferrets, cage, food, and all. Brian couldn't contain himself! He told me about the ad and I said, "I don't want ferrets." He then promptly came upstairs and called the girl. We went up to Cedar to look at them. They were pretty mellow and she said that they don't chew on anything, so I agreed.

The boys (all 3 of them) were ecstatic!!

They had names, but we decided to change them to ones that are more kid friendly. Brian choose Chewy (like Chewbacca) for the brown one and Ollie picked out the name Frosty for the white one all by himself.

They are actually pretty cute and very nice. They sleep a lot of the day, don't have to be taken on walks, eat fairly inexpensive ferret food, and don't way mind the boys overwhelming affection. Although, they are starting to seem a little scared. We're working on being gentle with them. They love to sneak into tiny crevasses that we didn't even know existed.

So far, it's actually been really enjoyable. There has been some pottying on the floor, but what else is new? And the boys all love them so it's worth it! Especially since Brian cleans up after them. It was his idea, so he has taken on the responsibility. Welcome Chewy and Frosty!

Cute Brothies

2011-07-03T19:34:00.000-07:00

A couple of days ago, the boys were just being such cute brothies. They were so nice to each other that day. They cuddled peacefully with their Daddy on the couch while they watched "Wallace and Gromet." Then Dexy happily took a nap and Ollie played quietly.

After nap time, they asked me if they could have some of my milk, so I gave them each a straw and they shared nicely and had a great time blowing bubbles in my chocolate milk. They actually drank it all, too.

While I made dinner they sat at the counter and painted with watercolors without whiney, complaining, or fighting.

We ate dinner, gave them a bath, and got them ready for bed. When they were all ready, they sat themselves down on the little stair outside Ollie's room and "read" stories together.

Dexy did the "reading" and Ollie listened quietly like a kind big brothie.

They were basically pleasant the whole day. It was beautiful! And not only were they pleasant, but they were being so cute and kind with each other. It was a good, good day!

A Friday Morning Tradition, Hopefully

2011-07-02T21:02:00.000-07:00

Friday morning at the library they have a very fun and age appropriate toddler time story hour. The boys very much enjoy it! We love having such a fun storytime to attend. And then, they of course want to go to the splashpad. And who wouldn't? It's right next to the library. It's summer. When story time is finished it's about 11:40. Perfect water play time!

So we sunscreen everyone up and head out into the water. It's always teaming with kids. But that sure doesn't bug them. And doesn't really bug us either. It's actually brilliant! An chance to use our brains and then a chance to use our bodies. We've decided to make it a tradition and go every Friday, hopefully.

4 Kids in a Tub

2011-06-29T20:42:00.000-07:00

There were 4 kids in a tub and the little one said........

"Move over! I'm crowded!"

I guess the little one can't actually talk. It was a little crowded.........

........but they actually all really enjoyed themselves!

Off to the Neighborhood!

2011-06-29T14:27:00.000-07:00

A few days ago, Ollie was adamant about taking his letter puzzle to "the neighborhood." Whatever that means.

He was saying, "we'll put the pieces in the bag (he put them all one by one into my purse), and take the puzzle, here you carry it, to the neighborhood." He wanted me to carry the bag and the puzzle board, but when I told him I had to stay and do the dishes, he decided that he could go without me. He slung the bag over his arm, hoisted the board and took off out our door, up the complex walk, and off down the sidewalk.

Too bad he forgot to put on clothes! So I made him come back inside. I guess we'll just have to go to the neighborhood another day.

Messy, Chocolicious Fun

2011-06-27T00:28:00.000-07:00

Ollie really wanted to make chocolate pudding. So we did! Then we ate it. It was yummy. Ollie did a pretty good job of keeping the mess to a minimum. He's getting to be such a big boy!
Now Dexy on the other hand, was a huge mess!

And apparently, loving every minute of it.

He's such a cute mess, though!

My Parents Moved to Nebraska!!

2011-06-26T23:59:00.000-07:00

You heard that right. My parents moved to Scottsbluff, Nebraska. My dad finished his year program up at Weber State in clinical labratory services. He then started putting in applications, including one in Scottsbluff and got the job out there. It all happened very quickly. But it should be a good set up for him. They are allowing him to use their lab to continue working on his bachelor's degree and paying him to work at the same time. They have a cute, little apartment out there and seem to be enjoying it. When my dad got offered the job, they only had about a week to come get whatever they needed before heading out there. There was still a lot of their stuff at their house (where we live), so they came over for a couple of days and raced through it, taking what they needed and leaving the rest in a whirlwind of chaos. This place was a huge mess! It was kind of fun, though to help them and to hussel through everything on such a tight schedule. Adventure! This place is still a huge mess, but I was happy to help and am happy to keep helping to clear everything out, organize, and clean the upheaval that is the result of such a fast move. I just slowly keep pluggin' along. It's nice to have a little more space and a lot less stuff hanging around (two families worth of clutter can really add up). I'm so grateful to my parents for letting us live here at such a good price! And so impressed that they were able to take so much stuff with them in such a hurried move. Thanks!
They got a little U-Haul and hitched the car to it. My mom drove their truck. My dad got the fun task of driving the U-Haul. Ollie loved the big truck.

He was determined to go with them! First he got in the U-Haul with Granpy. He had a fun time turning the big steering wheel, but wasn't too happy when I made him get out.

Then he took off down the sidewalk when Grammy started trying to leave....

....and climbed in the truck to go with her. Grammy had told him that they were going to Aunt Marie's house first to pick up a few things. After she told him that, he just kept saying, "I'm gonna go to Aunt Marie's house real quick. I just need to check something." He was thinking up any and every way he could to go with Granpy and Grammy. But alas, his mean mommy eventually dragged him out of the truck and hauled him back inside. We will all miss them so much, but are kind of excited for them to have a new adventure! And with Skype (love it!) we can all video call and still get to see each other. We wish them tons of luck!

Transportation Cookies

2011-06-21T21:37:00.000-07:00

Ollie discovered the cookie cutters in his closet about a week ago and has been getting them out and playing with them and begging to make cookies. Well, when he found the transportation cookie cutters, he got really excited. He drove them around and assigned everyone a vehicle - the sailboat for Alice, the fire truck for Daddy, the car for Uncle Derek, the train for Dexy, etc. So finally, a couple days ago, we invited Jude over and made sugar cookies. They were all very happy about it.
Especially the blue frosting that Cristina made for them. Jude didn't eat any of the cookie, but had an enjoyable time licking all the frosting off.

Ollie did a lot of just licking as well, but did finally take a few bites of the actual cookie.

It made his day!

And where was Alice during all this? Sleeping, like a little angel of course. Too bad she missed out on her sailboat. Maybe next time!

Us, Through Ollie's Eyes

2011-06-21T21:31:00.001-07:00

Oliver got the camera one day and took a picture of each of his family members.
Bad timing, I guess. Or maybe this is just what he thinks of us.

Aren't we beautiful?!?

It's that Time Again!

2011-06-12T20:13:00.000-07:00

But it's sadly that time for the last time, ever. My Harry Potter obsession is moving into it's peak madness as the last and finale movie (*sniff, sniff*) is now just a little over a month away!! I know that I'm suppose to be an adult, but I'm not and I'm am getting so anxious and excited and yet so sad that it's coming to an end just like an annoying tween. And call me a silly school girl, but I love Ron and Hermione's relationship and I'm pretty darn sure that I am seriously going to wet my pants when we finally get to see them kiss!! I have waited 10 years for this and I am going to enjoy it. And finally we'll get to see Snape in all of his glory. So going to cry over him! Look as this brilliant picture of him as headmaster! He rocks!

The trailers that have been released over the last couple months look spectacular!! This is going to be an amazing movie. I am so EXCITED!!!! And that's why I have added this countdown clock to my blog. "And now we wait." (Hermione says that in the 3rd movie, in case you're not as fanatic as I am!) AHHHHHHH!!!

Weekend of Bowles' Fun

2011-06-08T13:50:00.001-07:00

WARNING: This is another long post. I'm going to try to be less wordy, but there are still lots of pictures. When Brian's family comes down to visit us, they only get to come for Friday and Saturday, so we pack a lot of fun into the short time that we have. They got here at about midnight Thursday, so everyone just went to sleep. But the next morning, Friday June 3rd, the fun frenzy began. Grandma Bowles started bustin' open the packs of party poppers for the boys. Then there was a few moments of calm catching up time before moving on to the next activity.
We walked down to Snow Park to play before lunch. Dexy was laughing his head off and loving every minute of Uncle Ben letting him "kick" him from the swing.

Ollie took his cool dude self one of the few shady spots to dig in the sand. Angela went over to play with him and helped him build a sand birthday cake, which Angela told us he even took a bite of when they were done.

Dexy flying with his Daddy!

It has been a really long time since I climbed a tree, so I decided to climb this one and ended up with lots of company. It was so nice and cool up in the leafy branches! I like Ollie's askew sunglasses. This quickly became one of my new favorite pictures.

Then we went home for a quick chicken salad sandwhich lunch before we ditched nap time and headed off for more fun at Sand Hallow Aquatic Center where the family summer pass that we purchased is already proving itself very worth the mere $100 we paid for it. Since we first went there, all Oliver could talk about was bringing Angela (or Grandma or Uncle Ben, etc.) to the blue water slide, so we knew we had to take them there. The water slide was, as always, a huge hit!

But when somebody either pottied or had a diaper leak in the kids area of the pool, that whole section including the water slide got closed down temporarily for cleaning. We got banished to the much colder lap pool, but it was still fun. The water slide opened again in enough time for us to take a couple more trips before it was time to go. After the pool, we piled into the Bowles saburben and the first thing Ollie did was say, "we should get some ice cream!" Of course, grandparents can't resist so we stopped off at Menchie's for the best fro yo around! Then dinner and a beside himself naplessly super tired Dexy before I got the boys in bed and the babysitter here and went to meet everyone else out at Tuachan for The Little Mermaid. It is an amazingly visual play! Loved the effects and the colors! Their desire to see this play was the catalyst for their trip down here. It was very fun!

The next morning, Saturday June 4th, Brian's dad took Ben and Brian golfing bright and early and the boys were back at it with the poppers. They love them and Grandma Bowles always buys several bags of party poppers for them. It's become their special Grandma Bowles tradition. It makes them very happy!

This time they were really enjoying throwing fistfuls of poppers at one time.

When the men got back, it was back into the surburban for another adventure. This time we were on our way to the sand dunes in the Snow Canyon State Park. Dexy chilled on Angela as nap time was drawing near, while....

....Oliver tried to eat the wind that was rushing in through the open window in front of him.

The sand was so HOT! We had a great time running and jumping off of the dune.

Brian could jump really far...

...but in the end, Ben won the jumping competition by a mere inch or so.

Then Amanda volunteered herself to be buried. The sand was much cooler underneath, so she was actually the lucky one.

We got her buried good!

Dexy who was already tired, refused to get down in the sand at all. He snuggled with Grandpa while the rest of us played. In fact, if Grandpa tried to set him down, he'd pull his legs up and refuse to be set down. The rest of us had a grand old time digging, jumping, rolling, and running in the super soft sand!

When we got back, I put Dexy down for a quick late nap and everyone else zonked out, too! I made Brian's cake and we all got cleaned up. There was lots of sand in our clothes! After about an hour of Dexy napping, we woke him up (poor kid who gets so tired during our intense fun packed weekend) and went to Chuck A Rama for an early dinner. It was yummy and we stuffed ourselves so much that nobody wanted any of Brian's birthday cake when we got back.

His birthday was actually on Sunday, but we sang to him on Saturday since his family was here to join in. He pulled a classic Brian and smashed his face into his cake as soon as the song ended. Good thing I made two cakes. Since we were all so full, we just had the second one for his actually b-day the following day.

Ollie was found it so incredulously funny and tried to wipe the cake off Brian's face! And then the party was over. They loaded up the suburban and we said our good-byes and they headed back up to the land of the cold, poor unfortunate souls. The boys went out to watch them leave and chased them down the sidewalk as the drove away. When Ollie couldn't keep up with their car anymore, he stopped and sadly said, "OH! They're gone!" What fun!

Bathroom Duty

2011-06-08T13:43:00.000-07:00

During naptime on June 1st, I got cleaning the bathrooms and Ollie decided to help. He doesn't nap anymore, but I usually let him play on the computer as his quiet activity during that time, but he wanted to help me clean the bathrooms more than play computer games. Sweet! I'll take help any day! It had been way to long since either one of them had been cleaned very well, so we totally cleared the counters and sprayed everything down. Ollie loved being the sprayer! He was even pretty good at the cleaning up after he sprayed. He helped me clean the counter, mirror, and sink in both of the bathrooms! He was a very good helper!

Memorial Day

2011-06-08T13:05:00.000-07:00

We had a really relaxed, laid-back Memorial Day. It was so nice to just kind of enjoy the beautiful day and take it easy. Derek's family came over to enjoy the afternoon with us. It was perfect weather outside, so the boys and I went out to blow bubbles.

They each had to have their own wand and bottle so that they could do it themselves. They are toddlers finding their independence after all.

They got so that they were even actually blowing some bubbles. They really had a good time. But, the fun ended when the bubble solution started running out and they spilled the last bottle fighting over who got to hold it. It was great fun, though, while it lasted!

And we grilled up some delicious steak strips, red peppers, and corn on the cob and just ate yummy food and chilled. Thanks to all those who have and do serve our country so that we can have the freedoms we enjoy! Happy Memorial Day!

Family Trip to the Red Rocks

2011-05-30T14:00:00.000-07:00

A week ago Saturday we went up to the Dixie Rocks for some big family fun. We met my Dad and Derek's family up there and had a grand old time! While hiking around, Brian found this cave that you could slide down into. So he of course, did!
Once Ollie realized that Daddy had disappeared into a cool hole, he had to abandon his rock jumping to run over there and try it himself.

With a little help from Cristina at the top and his Daddy below, he made it no problem.

Dexy was the next one to disappear into the cavern.

Once the three of them had slithered down there, then everyone wanted to do it. So Brian went to find an exit on the other side, while...

....while my Dad and Derek joined the cave party.

Here come Brian and Ollie out the other side. Dexy decided that he didn't want to squeeze through the exit, so he got passed back up.

The rest of them made it out just fine. Jude wouldn't even have anything to do with the cave, so once the men made it out, Cristina and I passed Dexy and Jude down to them so that we could give the cave slide a try.

There she goes. Sliding was literally the only way to get down. It was fun!

After she went, then I decesended into the cave of waonders as well. We soon realized why the younger boys hadn't wanted to try it. It was pretty squishy down there. Especially where you had to pass under this huge overhang to get out on the other side. I found it quite enjoyable.

The exit dropped us right at the mouth of this narrow canyon passage. This time, Jude wasn't so scared and he and Ollie took off after Grandpa to give it a go.

Derek and Brian decided that they're big, manly chests would prohibit them from passing through, so they went around and watched from the top as we squeezed through. My Dad eventually had to turn around and go back, too, when it got to tight for him. Ollie and Jude plowed ahead all on their own with out a second glance back!

Then Cristina and I squeezed through with Dexy. Now this was less enjoyable, because over halfway through the passage, Dexy decided that he didn't want to do this anymore. It was too late to turn around and go back, so Cristina and I each grabbed him under a shoulder and literally dragged him the rest of the way. It was horrible! He was screaming at the top of his lungs the whole rest of the way and in his attempt to not have to go through (he did the toddler "dead fish" move that they do when they're resistant), he made is so much worse for himself. His head and knees were banging and scrabbing all along the canyon walls! Not so much fun.

We finally made it out of the canyon to freedom and he eventually calmed down. Then we took off across the rocks to find a place to enjoy our delicious, random lunch.

We found the perfect spot! Cristina had been the wise one who thought to bring some food with her. She kept apologizing for it's randomness, but it was actually rather enjoyable - ham slices, cheese sticks, bananas, pop-tarts and smores goldfish crackers. Yum!!

After getting some food and water in us, there was a moment of renewed zeal. The little boys had fun playing in the dirt, running around, and taking turns jumping off this rock.

While the big boys had fun showing off their strenth and manliness by doing pull-ups on the rock walls. Derek, whose buff and a lightweight, can do a few one-handed!

Sir, gave it a try and didn't do too bad for an "old man" as he put it.

And Brian, who is super strong but has a lot more gerth to his frame than my Dad and Derek, even busted out a few pull-ups! He's so studly!!

But alas, even good things must come to an end. As sacred nap time approached, we said good-by to the red rocks for the day and headed back to the cars. But we will for sure go again! We always do. How can we not? So much fun, the boys love it, and so free!! It was a fun day.

A Meandering Adventure

2011-05-23T20:44:00.000-07:00

On the 19th, the boys and I ending up having a fabulous time just going out and wandering around. We took Brian to class, but were going to have to pick him up in a couple of hours, so I didn't want to go home and do nothing. First we decided to go to the library. Storytime was already over by the time we got there, so we picked out a stack of books until Ollie said he wanted to leave. We checked the books out and headed outside. We still had time to kill, so we went to sit on the big stairs behind the splashpad and read some of our newly borrowed stories. But when we got outside, there were a ton of kids running around playing all over the splashpad and kicking balls in the field. All chances to read were gone. I put the books in the car. The boys were mesmerized by the big kids. Soon, they wanted to get wet, too. I didn't think it was such a good day for that. It was very windy, cloudy, and even a little chilly. Ollie kept pulling his shirt up and saying, "I want to be naked." We had to wander away from that area before one of them got soaking wet and therefore freezing and whiny. So, we meandered off toward the gazeboo. We looked at flowers, sat on the gazeboo benches, moved rocks to see lots of little bugs, and then starting walking past the Woodward building. As we passed, Dexy noticed the perfectly slanted cement slabs running next to the stairs. It was his idea to climb one and then try sliding down it. It was a brilliant idea!! The boys made such a fun activity out of climbing up the slab and then sliding down it, climbing the stairs and sliding down the slab, hanging onto the banister and swinging and then sliding down. Up and down and up and down they went and loved every minute of it! Fun times were had by all, until Dexy decided to slide down one head first and bashed his face into the cement ground. I was way over on the other side talking to Ollie, so I didn't make it to Dex in time to save him from a little blood and a fat lip. It wasn't that bad of an injury, but then it was time for a new activity.
So we started drifting toward Judd's Store to get a treat. On our way there we passed by a telephone booth. It had the symbol for the British Crown on it and everything, so I knew it would take us where we wanted to go - The Ministry of Magic! I, of course, had to take the visitors entrance this time around, seeing as I had the boys with me. Alas, they must have been closed that day for some reason. We then had no choice, but to continue on to Judd's where the boys ate a whole, big pack of Sixlets while I waited in line for some breaksticks and cheese sauce to go seeing as it was unfortunately time to go retrieve Brian from the college. It turned out being such a fun activity, eventhough it was so unformal, unplanned, and inexpensive. Who knew an aimless, meandering adventure could be so great?! I sure do now!

Dexter's 2 Year-Old Stats

2011-05-23T13:45:00.001-07:00

I'm very late on Dexy's 2 year-old stats, but we just had his doctor's appointment today. Here is my big Dexter in what Brian refers to as, "his senior photo." He looks so big and so grown-up! He is 37 inches and 32 lbs. He was off the chart for his length, but his weight to height ratio landed him in the low-mid section of the growth charts. He wears a size 9 toddler shoes, only a half size smaller than Oliver.

Dexter is all boy! He loves to play in mud and dirt, throw balls, kick things (including people sometimes), swing bats, and play with cars and trucks. He is also a TV baby, but still very much a boy in his show choices. He loves the show Team UmiZoomi, and the movies Cars and Toy Story (any of the 3).

He and his brothie actually get along well and do a good job of playing together. They are boys and get into push fights sometimes, but all things considered, they are best friends. Dexy is a fun, silly brother and I often find them laughing so hard about some silly thing that Dexy is doing. He likes teasing his brother.

Although Dexter turned 2 and the terrible two switch was instantly thrown, he is still our sweet, happy, pleasant Dexter. He still loves to cuddle with his Mommy, play with his Daddy, make his Brothie laugh, eats well, sleeps well, and has a general pleasant personality. He is 2 years-old now, that's for sure!! He has certainly found his independence and his voice! His communication is really starting to take off. He now tries to say everything. He has problems forming certain sounds, so they don't always come out correctly, but the fact that he is even trying to talk is huge for Dexter! His brother has always just been around to say it for him. It has helped a lot that Ollie started preschool 2 days a week (too bad it's summer vacation) and Dexy had some one on one time for us to focus on him. He now says SO many more words than he use to. He says: Mom, Dad, Doo (what he calls Ollie), ball, hand, please, bubble, kick, zero, one, two, four, five, six, eight, nine, ten, yellow, green, blue, purple, black, circle, square, triangle, rectangle, star, shoes, socks, juice, cheese, banana, bread, up, down, help, scissors, lizard, every animal sound you could think of, and maybe a few more words that I forgot. Now, granted this are not all said clearly and you might have to be me to know that's what he's trying to say, but he is working so hard and making such good progress. He and I also use sign language which helps a lot!

He has the most beautiful, full-head of hair ever! I wash it and it drys perfectly. In the morning, however, it doesn't always look so perfect. He can wake up with some rock awesome bed head!

Now, this picture probably doesn't seem all that weird, until I tell you that this was taken first thing in the morning right after he woke up. Dexy has attitude towards clothes in general and specifically toward jammies. The night before this we tried and tried to get him ready for bed in his jammies, but he would wear nothing other than his current favorites - a navy blue polo and blue plaid shorts. He slept happily in this outfit all night long and the good thing was, in the morning I just had to change his diaper and he was ready for the day. He has worn all sorts of interesting clothes concoctions to bed! He is very, very picky about his clothing. I already can't buy my boys any clothes without their approval.

Dexy is obsessed with the color blue! He will only eat off of a blue plate or bowl, has to have blue sippy cups, perfers the blue balls and cars to play with, will cry if I put a diaper on him that's not blue, and usually picks out clothes that have blue on them. His blue hockey blanket is by far his favorite, but if that one is dirty then the blue monkey blanket is the only other acceptable option. He use to prefer strawberry milk, but now that he's realized that the lid on the chocolate Nesquik is blue he'll only drink chocolate milk. He especially loves this blue shark towel of Jude's. We have to take a bath there if we go over for dinner, just so that Dexy can use the blue shark towel. It's a combo of 2 of his favorite things, the color blue and sharks. He loves sharks and fish, too. Clothing is also acceptable if it has a fish, a shark, or a dino on it, even if it's not blue, but those are the rare exceptions. It's all about the BLUE!

Our cute Dexter is so silly! He loves to lay on the stairs for weird reasons; it's his favorite place to lay for diaper changes or for eating and drinking. He often walks or even scampers on his tippy-toes. He does squatty, ti-chi dancing. He loves Goldfish crackers. He likes letters and knows the whole alphabet. Dexy enjoys sitting and looking at books by himself. His favorite number is ten and if you ask him how old he is, he often says, "10!" His favorite songs are (and this might seem weird) Ba Ba Black sheep, Isty Bitsy Spider, Three Little Ducks, Stamp on the Ground by the Italo Brothers and Lovesick by Emily Osment (he likes the part where she kind of whispers "super sonic boom, super sonic boom" best). He has the most precious, dimpled smile ever! It makes disciplining him so hard sometimes.

Pictures for the last post

2011-05-17T17:14:00.000-07:00

For some unknown reason, blogger would not let me fix my last posts pictures. No matter how many times I tried to upload them, they wouldn't go. I hope that loading them up seperately through Picasa will work. So, here they are (maybe).

Fun at a Fevered Pitch

2011-05-15T21:56:00.000-07:00

The last post was SOOOOO long! Sorry! I will work to be less wordy this time. Basically, for the last couple of weeks we have just been having so much fun! Brian is going to school year round, so I think we were trying to make the most of his short summer break. Good thing because it's now over; he's back to classes tomorrow. On Friday night our partying continued with girls and kids night out. It was our ward's father and sons camp out and Brian was doing the fireside talk, so he had to be there. Derek and my dad wanted to go along for the campout. So, while the menfolk were out, we played too! It was already almost bedtime when we started, but we decided that every know and then it's ok to let the kids have a special activity. We took them to Krave for frozen yogurt and then to the movie in the park. Washington City was having it's cotton days and we were all about participating in their free, fun activity.

They showed Disney's Tangled (which I love). When we first got there the boys were more interested in climbing the rocks, running around, hanging on a canapy frame someone left out, flopping in the grass, crawling under the Washington City banner and trying to join other people's families. Finally, they rested for a moment to catch some of the flick. It got quite windy and tons of people abandoned ship so quickly, but we were some of the die-hards that stuck it out a while. We had to leave before the movie was over because it was nearly 10:30 and that is quite late enough for a group of such little ones, but we had a great time!!

Then yesterday we took Cristina's fabulous idea and went and fed the ducks at the Bloomington golf course on Ft. Pierce Dr. This activity was a huge hit with the kids! Even more than I thought it would be. They went through SO much bread and by the time it was all gone, we had gathered quite a passel of ducks. Jude was determined to get in the pond, even after tons of reminders by his dad that he not get in the disgusting water. The boys again had a great time just being outside, running around, and playing.

After the bread was gone, they moved onto throwing rocks into the pond. They'd run up to the wayside, gather a handful, pitch them in the water, and go back for more. Brian schooled us all at skipping stones! He got several to skip 4 or 5 times and a few to skip upwards of 10 times! Ollie tried to be like his Daddy and worked on his stone skipping, too. It was a beautiful day and such a nice time full of old fashion fun!

We then got Icees at a gas station with Grammy and Granpy before heading home for a much needed nap time. Dexy happily went right into his crib and ended up sleeping over 3 1/2 hours. Ollie, who doesn't usually nap anymore, litterally slipped into sleep while playing on the computer. He had gone potty while I was downstairs moving the laundry and by the time I got back, he was sleeping; pants-less, hanging off his chair, with the same annoying song repeating endless from the computer! I put his pants back on him and lifted him into his bed without so much as a stir from him. He then slept for over an hour. I had to wake him up at 5:45 so he'd go back to bed that night. We've really got them worn out, I guess!

The fun wasn't over yet after nap time. We took them to Wal-Mart so Dexy could pick out presents with his birthday money. Brian helped him choose the velcro catch set which they loved when we got it home and open. They found it fascinating that the ball stuck to the "mitts." After a little bit of playing with it, Ollie took his mitt and said, "let's put it on my back!" Where do they come up with these things. Dexy picked out his LeapFrog Leaptop all by himself. He loves it!! In fact, they both love it. Ollie was instantly trying to snake it from his brother. It is a pretty cool toy. You can connect it to your computer and load up your child's name, so that the "emails" are actually to them and it can sing a name spelling song to them. We've been having such a rock'roarin' time the last couple weeks. It was nice that today was Sunday, though. We finally took it easy for a day! That wasn't all that less wordy. Sorry! I've got issues.

Happy 2nd Birthday Dexter!

2011-05-13T17:41:00.000-07:00

OK. So I know that this post for Dexy's birthday is super late, but I want you to know that it's because he had a super super 3 day birthday celebration attack special!! It's not because he's the second child whose getting less because his mother is crapping out. He in fact had a very slammin' birthday! Warning: this is an extremely long post! Procede with ample time and caution! So his extended celebration started on his actually birthday, May 6th, after nap time. Ollie and I made the cupcakes while he was napping and since it was his birthday, I let him have one before dinner and before the "party" started.

What a cute, silly goof! He still loves his rags that I used as burp clothes and has to have one to go to sleep. It's like his lovey. He carries one around and even keeps it right next to him while he's eating. They sometimes get quite messy (you'll see a real doozy later in this post actually)! Good thing they wash pretty well.

He was excited about his cupcake, eventhough I hadn't made the frosting. Ollie reaped the benefits of the birthday boy and got an advance cupcake, too! Then the partying began. Derek's family came over and we had grilled hamburgers for dinner. Brian and I are in a babysitting group with 3 other families and Dexy's birthday fell on a Friday (the day we do the babysitting trade), so I said that I would watch all the kids that week so that Dexy's birthday could even be like a real party. It was right before Mother's day, so we only had one family show. It was still fun, though, to have other kids come enjoy the fun.

After they played a bit, we let Dexy open his cards. He had an almost stictly card birthday, but he seemed to be totally fine with that. We've collected all the "dollars" he got from his cards and will go get him something fun.

There was a 2 on one of the cards and it inspired him to show me all of his own accord that he was 2 now!

Then we played pin the piggytails on Milli (thanks Cristina for the great idea) since Dexy loves Team UmiZoomi. It was quite fun and even the little kids enjoyed it more than I thought they would. One of the friends from our babysitting group won. She's the oldest and was wise enough to feel for the piggytails that we had put on there to show them how it works. Good job, Jodilee!

Next we colored the frosting blue, pink, and green (to kind of represent Geo, Milli, and Bot from UmiZoomi) and let the kids decorate their own cupcakes. Dexy much preferred just eating the frosting straight from the bowl over actually decorating his cupcake.

Jodilee got right to business. It took Stran and Jude a little while to get into it, but once they did, they were diggin' it. Stran PILED on the frosting and Jude PILED on the sprinkles!

Ollie made a neat, clean looking circle of frosting, sprinkled on a few sprinkles and decided that that was enough decorating. It was time for eating.

Janie sat and carefully and beautifully decorated a cupcake for her mom before she'd do one for herself. She also asked me to make one for her dad and wouldn't eat her cupcake, but said that she wanted to take them all home. Side note: I love how every kid has their very own personality! It's fun when stuff like this brings it out and we get to observe it. Moving on.

I had made a mini loaf pan sized cupcake to be Dexy's own personal birthday cake. It was actually so cute! We sang happy birthday and he blew out his candles by himself! He's getting so big and independent. I love the way he holds his lips when he blows - so cute and funny!

Then our friends went home and we stuck our super messy kids in the bath. Dexy got to open his last present - a new outfit from Mom and Dad. His only other present (rather than a card) was a great Toy Story 3 book from Derek and Cristina, which he loves! Way more than the outfit that I picked out and he has so far refused to wear. We'll work on it. He's just 2 now and doesn't want to do anything that I want him to do.

The very next day we got in the car and headed up North to be there for Hollianne's Mother's Day call from the mission field. Brian pulled off to the side of the road once to let Ollie pee, but then would not stop for the rest of the trip. I had to help Ollie pee in an empty soda can twice. Dexy had been strapped in his seat the whole time. By the time we were driving through Provo, I looked back and saw this. He looked like he was so bored and annoyed of being in his seat, but he was just so precious about it! He wasn't whining or crying, just quietly fed-up, cuddling Stitch. Even more sad? Just a few minutes after I took this picture he seriously threw up all over himself and his seat. I'm so sure that he has pretty bad motion sickness because he throws up in the car or after we finish a long drive so often. And guess what? Brian still wouldn't stop! He said that we were so close, rolled the windows down to blow out the smell, and made us all press on.

When Ollie saw me snapping a picture of Dexy, then he had to be cute, too. And he is! The boys did so good on the drive up there! Especially considering our sad state when we arrived. By the time we got there, Ollie had peed in a can twice (which I had to help him with) and was complaining that he needed to poop in the potty, I was seconds away from wetting my pants, and Dexy was covered in barf!! But hey - we made good time, right?!

After I dashed in the house to pee, let Ollie go potty, gave Dexy a bath to get the puke off him, got him dressed, dumbed the pee can, and sprayed off Dexy's disgusting carseat, it was time to resume the celebrating. Dex got more great cards from Grandma and Grandpa Bowles and Great Grandma Christensen. This Tigger card from Grma and Grpa Bowles played a part of the Tigger song and he loved it!!! Every time the song would finish, he'd close the card and open it again and make the same super excited surprised face that it was playing music. So cute!

After dinner is was time to bust out the super duper Bowles family birthday song medley! It's fun but pretty long, but Dexy waited paitently and then excitedly blew out his candles again.

Amanda's birthday is the day before Dexy's, so we were having a combo celebration for both of them. The smoke rising off of the cake after she blew out her candles was awesome! I guess that's what happens once you get fire from 20 or more candles. Then we dug into delicious cake and ice cream.

After that the partying continued with the beating of the ugliest pinata I think I've seen to date. Amanda's birthday is on May 5th, Cinco De Mayo, so it's been a tradition for her family to get her a pinata for her b-day every year. Dexy was not so much excited about the pinata and after one attempt was done.

Ollie was more than happy to take several whacks at it! And yes, those are jammies and he did wear them all day. He didn't want to get dressed and since we were just going to be in the car, I didn't make him. Plus he's 3 years old. Got to get away with that stuff while you're still young and cute enough to do so. Anyway. Back to pinata-ing.

Then it was time to get serious. Amanda stepped up to the plate.

Next up was Angela. And she ended up taking her down! It didn't take as long as the Spongebob pinata last year. She gave up the goods much sooner. After a few trys, Angela gave her a good whack and ended up decapitating her. The body went flying and her head was left swinging.

The loot was plentiful and delightful!

One of my favorite pictures! I love how Dexy is up close showing me the one pack of Sixlets tha the picked up and Ollie is the background with both hands full of candy and running to get more! Classic!

Finally off to the big bathtub to clean up, calm down, and get ready for bed. Grma brought in her brilliant bubble gun to shoot at them. So fascinating and beautiful! They had a great time and were so happy to go to sleep when I finally put them in bed.

And first thing the next morning, Dexy had found his musical Tigger card and was at it again! He seriously loves this and carried it around for days playing it again and again. We went to Church then waited for Hollianne's call. We all got to talk to her. It was great! And Grpa Bowles made 4 pies for Mother's Day. Yummy!

Then on Monday it was extended Bowles' family birthdays celebration. They had it at Brian's parents' house because his Grandparents have bed bugs and were having their house fumigated (yuck)! Dexy is the youngest birthday in May so he got sung to first and got to blow out candles for the third time (I told you it was super super 3 day extraveganza)!

Grma Bowles then convinced everyone to sing to Ollie next because we weren't up there for his birthday. Brian and I both thought he didn't need special privilages, but that's what grandma's are for, huh? He was pretty excited about it, espcially getting to blow out candles since Dexy had been doing it all weekend and he didn't get to.

It fuelled his fire and he really got into singing happy birthday to all the rest of the May birthdays. I like how he only has one sock on. That happens often. He was so enjoying himself!

After days of fun celebrating, the crash was pretty spectacular! Boys zonked out everywhere! Dexy refused to sleep in the crib the whole time that we were there. I was super worried about him doing the same thing when we got back home, but he only wouldn't sleep in his crib the first night we got back and he was already upset from the drive . He is now happily sleeping in his crib again. Whooh! Dodged a bullet there. At least for now.

It was super cold, gray and rainy the whole time that we were up there until the very last day. This always makes me sad because they have a nice, big backyard and a tramp, both things that we don't have but my boys love. They didn't get to play outside too much, so when the sun came out the last few hours that we were there, they took off into the front yard when I went out to load the car. And they of course found the mud instantly! Dexy was covered in it and his lovey rag that he had with him was a complete mess!

Ollie wasn't quite as muddy, but they were both wet and filthy just in time to get in the car for hours. I stripped them down and put them in Grma Bowles big kitchen sink, one in each side, and sprayed the mud off. They got dressed and got to go to the park with Grma and Angela. Then we had pizza and loaded them in the car. We stopped in Eagle Mountain to see Johnny, Hailey, Landon and new baby Grace for about an hour. The boys were excited to get out of the car and play with a friend. But, too soon it was back into the car for a straight no-stop shot back home. Ollie fell asleep fast. Dexy was quite upset, but eventually fell asleep until about 15 miles from home. So the trip back was better. At least there was no can peeing or barfing this time! So that's the end of Dexy's super super 3 day birthday celebration attack special!!! I'll do another post about his stats and what he's up too lately at another time. This one really was an attack and I need a rest now! But we love our sweet Dexy and are glad he had such a great birthday!

Happy Easter!

2011-04-30T12:41:00.000-07:00

I know, this is almost a week late, but I've been having issues with my SD card. My computer wouldn't read it and wouldn't read it and it finally did today. That's why I haven't posted in so long and am now behind. We'll just start with Easter, though. We had a very fun, low-key kind of Easter. We didn't dye eggs. We didn't get them big baskets with lots of junk that they didn't need. We didn't even do anything until after Church. I wanted Sunday to still be Sunday and for the whole purpose of Easter - the ressurection of Christ - to be at the forefront of the day. It turned out well. And, we still got some treats and had a good time with family. After nap time we went to Cristina's (my sister-in-law) mom's house. She has a great backyard and was very kind to let us all come have an Easter egg hunt at her house. My parents, Derek's family, my family, and Cristina's mom were in attendence. The grandmas had gone all out! There were books and plastic eggs EVERYWHERE! The eggs were filled perfectly - a few Angie approved treats such as marshmallows, fruit snacks, and clementines and then some little fun things like stickers, stretchy braclets, and even some Hot Wheels cars. Cristina and I were anti a bunch of processed sugar and it was so nice for everyone to comply and still find things that felt like treats to the boys. We got the boys sand buckets instead of baskets so that they could be a part of their "treats" for the day. Each boy adopted a different egg hunting style. Jude would only collect the clementines. If his mom handed him an egg, he'd just throw it and pile another orange into his bucket. Ollie only gathered eggs, but he wouldn't put the egg in his bucket. He cracked every egg, dumped it's contents into his bucket, and then cast aside the empty egg. Dexy was the only one we went traditional and gathered eggs, oranges, and the books into his bucket. Then we had hamburgers on the grill. It was beautiful earlier in the day, but the weather turned on us. It was so windy that most everyone ate inside. Derek and I got blown away trying to eat outside. It even rained a little bit. Then the boys each got a big, blue sucker after dinner and had a great time playing their "running back and forth" game down the hall (they do it everywhere we go when the 3 of them are together). We had a fun Easter! Thanks to everyone for providing houses, food, treats, and their company. And thanks to Grandma Bowles for the boys super cute outfits that came in their Easter package. They wore them to Church and looked so cute all day. Happy Easter!

Sleeping Dexy

2011-04-19T11:58:00.000-07:00

Lately I've been finding Dexy sleeping in some stellar positions.

Like sitting straight up

and with his pillow over his head and his cute belly all exposed.

Then on Sunday, we were spending some time with my parents before my dad headed back up North. We love seeing Granpy, so I let them stay up and play. After my parents left, they were acting kind of worn out, so we went into my room to lay down and watch a movie. I was hoping to give them at least a little rest. Ollie watched for about 10 or 15 minutes and then had had all the rest he needed. But Dexy did exactly what I was wishing - zonked out!

He's soooo long and beautiful all sprawled out on our bed!

Random Daily Happenings

2011-04-19T11:21:00.000-07:00

The boys both wanted to nap in our bed one day, so I decided to give it a try. They both laid right down, and quietly went to sleep. I was shocked! They were so nice and looked so cute! However, when they tried it the next day it didn't work out so good and they were back in their own beds in 20 minutes. But it was sure precious!

Dexy has picked up his brother's mantel of letter obsession (Ollie has moved on to math). He had them at the table during dinner and decided that he liked them so much he wanted to eat them, I guess. Ollie use to do this kind of stuff with the letters, too.

Ollie decided that it would be so fun to slide down the stairs on his tummy.

It was rather entertaining and funny! However, Ollie has terribly sensitive skin.

This was the result of his fun. And the picture doesn't do it justice. It looked really painful!

Dexy is his daddy's little buddy! He loves to play with him and snuggle up to him while he watches TV or works on the computer. It's adorable!

My boys new thing is to climb behind the couch. It's a curved sectional, so there's a little gap between the sofa and the corner. Ollie can climb in and out of there easily. Dexy, however, can get back there, but then has a hard time getting out.

It's not my favorite activity of theirs, so sometimes I just leave him stuck back there for a few minutes while I finish what I'm doing. He's so easy-going that he chillaxes while he's waiting for me and just says, "Ma! Ma!" every 20 seconds or so. He is still less likely to go back there for a while after having to be stuck, though, which is good.

A couple of Sundays ago, Ollie had thrown up all night and then again in the morning while I was getting ready for Church. He kept saying that he wanted to go to Church, but he was so lethargic. I told him that if he was coming that he'd have to get up and get dressed. Then I went to get Dexy dressed. When I came back, I found Ollie on the floor. It was like he had tried to get up because he wanted to go to nursery so bad, but took 2 steps and collapsed on the floor. Needless to say, he didn't go to Church that week. No one in nursery wanted his barf germs anyway.

As I have said before, I am not much of a morning person. It takes us a while to get going. This is what it often looks like at my house utnil about 9 or 9:30. We lay around in my bed and sometimes watch a show while they drink their cupful of milk. I acutally kind of like these slow mornings. I do need to get better about get us dressed and ready for the day after that, though. Oliver has qualified for preschool and we'll need to have him up and ready by 9 a few times a week after the Easter break. I guess we'll have to just start our snuggle and chill session earlier. That's all that's been happening lately; nothing new or exciting. But it's our life and we like it!

Dexy's Ti-Chi Dancing

2011-04-08T11:40:00.000-07:00

This is so funny to me! It makes me want to pee my pants every time he dances like this.

Up! (with fixed pictures)

2011-04-08T11:35:00.000-07:00

Brian can throw his children higher than anyone else, I'd wadger. If there was a kid throwing contest, he'd win. The other day he was tossing them SO HIGH! I was up on the computer when all of a sudden I heard Brian say, "Say hi Mom!" and then I saw this! Dexy flying up over the balcony of the loft.

And then, "Say hi Mom!" and Ollie came flying up over the balcony! He tossed each one of them way up there, like 5 or 6 times each.

This Dexy toss was the record. He totally cleared the loft! Sometimes even I am blown away by my husband's strength and my boys enjoyment of flying! They were certainly soaring this day.

And Here's the Video of the Death Jump!

2011-04-07T20:47:00.000-07:00

Outside Day, Yay!

2011-04-07T20:10:00.000-07:00

This was a while ago now, but on one of the first really beautiful days, we had a whole day of playing outside and we loved every minute of the great St. George spring weather. We started by going to play with Jude and Cristina since they have a yard. It is sooooo nice to have a grassy area all of our own (eventhough it's not really ours, but they are always nice to share). The boys all crammed into Cristina's bike trailer for rides, ran around, and played. The little neighbor girl even joined us for a little while for sidewalk chalk and enjoying the sun. They loved it. Then we headed home for nap time, which went so smoothly since the had played hard and been outside.

After nap time, when Brian got home from class, we all went outside again. This time to the Dixie rocks for climbing and jumping fun. Our boys love it up there with their whole hearts!

The guys even did some strength tests this time by seeing how long they could hang from this little ledge. Dexy, not so long. Basically not so long that it was non-existent, but he tried.

Brian, for a long time! He's so big and strong!

Ollie, for surprisingly longer than most people would expect. This kid has great strength and body control!

I choose not to hang, but instead climbed into a little cave to sit and watch. The boys thought it looked like fun, so Brian helped them climb up to join me. This is an absolutely terrible picture of me, which makes me sad because there are so few of me enjoying family activities (I'm always the one behind the camera) and the boys look so cute, but at least it's a picture I guess.

And of course, there were death jumps to make. Ollie's new favorite jump! This sucker is high, especially considering the fact that Oliver is just barely 3 years old. His trust in his Daddy astounds me and his lack of fear for this kind of stuff is amazing. He is also really good to only jump when Brian says and to be careful while climbing up and waiting. He's such a good boy!

My beautiful Dexter, statuesque in a cave.

Oliver, being a precious goob like always. We love those red rocks! It was such a nice day and so fabulous to get out and enjoy it!

4 Kids, Not a Sound!

2011-03-29T14:05:00.000-07:00

I'm one of those people that's pretty good at a lot of things, but excellent at nothing, except for one thing - getting babies and toddlers to all nap at the same time. It's my one and only power. On Saturday, I watched Derek and Cristina's kids while Brian helped them move into their new place. It was me and 4 kids, 3 years or under, from 9 AM until about 6 PM. It wasn't bad because we all know and like each other. But around nap time, even I was ready for a break and some peace and quiet. I had to figure out where to put everyone, but I was determined to make it work and get them all to sleep. And so, I did! Dexy went in his crib and like a peach as always, went right to sleep and was happy about it.

I put Ollie in my bed. Because he was getting to sleep in Mommy's bed, he was also happy about it and went right in with his cup and blanket and climbed into bed all by himself.

I put Jude in Ollie's room and then sat on the couch to feed Alice her bottle. She settled in and ate and was also more than happy to go to sleep. The whole time I was feeding her, I kept seeing the bedroom door open for a few seconds, then close, heard Jude making noises, then the door opened for a few seconds and it started again, over and over and over. It was quite funny! Once Alice's bottle was finished, I set a playpen up for her behind our table and she was gone.

By this time, however, Jude was kind of sad. He was crying for his Mommy and Daddy. I went upstairs and as soon as I opened the door, Jude hopped up off the floor and scampered onto the bed. He has been under stress with the whole moving thing, but he settled very quickly once I came in. After laying by him for a whole 3 minutes, he was snoring as well. Triumph! All 4 kids were out and continued to sleep for a couple of hours. It was so nice for the only sound to be the beef broth simmering on the stove for a while.

Empty House Party

2011-03-29T14:02:00.000-07:00

When Derek and Cristina found out that their rent was going up $150, they started looking for a new place, as probably all of us would. They found a great deal. It's in a community of duplexs, allows pets, has an attached car port with a storage closet, a community pool, and even a little walled of backyard! We were all so excited to see it that we headed over there on Friday night after they got their keys. It was late, but they have a bathtub, right?! The house was totally empty and the boys loved it. They ran around in circles, tripped on the shag carpet, took pictures (Jude took the Ollie close up) and had the best time running in and out of the coat closet. Then we piled them all in the bathtub and they broke it in by sliding the door open and closed about 100 times and splashing everywhere, which actually isn't that big of a deal when you can just close the door. We were towel-less (the house was empty and I forgot to grab some) so they ran around some more to air dry. It was a grand old time! We're all excited for this new place and it's not even ours!

Dexy

2011-03-26T16:10:00.000-07:00

Dexy has fabulous hair. The best part about it is that sometimes he wakes up and it looks perfect. Other times, it looks like this!

He can get the most rock awesome bed head that I have ever seen going on. This was the way it looked after his nap the other day.

Another fabulous thing about my Dexy is that he loves to cuddle with people and he is his Daddy's little buddy.

Whenever Brian is sitting in this chair on the computer, Dexy crawls behind him and snuggles up to him. It's one of my favorite things!

Spring Break

2011-03-26T15:33:00.000-07:00

I haven't blogged in forever! What is the matter with me? Part of my problem was that we went up North for spring break. We are crazy to leave St. George and head where it's cold for the kick off of spring, but it was a great chance to see the Bowles clan. It was cold! It was a dangerous week! It was still good times! On our way up, we stopped at a playground to let the boys out and change diapers. Dexy fell and got a big cut right in between his eyes. A chair broke out from underneath Brian's mom and she went crashing down to the hardwood floor and probably had whiplash for a couple of days. Brian was playing with Ollie and Oliver slipped out of his control and cracked his face on a cedar bench. He now needs crowns on at least 2, maybe 3 of his teeth (the pic of Ollie in the upper right corner is at the dentist office when we took him in to make sure the damage wasn't too bad). See? Dangerous! Don't know what was in the air, but something had everyone off. Oh well. Everyone is ok and we still had fun. We went to the whole, extended Bowles family birthdays the first day that we were there and got too see tons of family. The boys love jumping on the tramp, playing in the backyard, and throwing the ball for Hajji. We celebrated Angela's birthday who turned 20 on the 21st. No more teenagers for them! We even had our old friend Brooklyn Bentensen over to play the last day that we were there. It has been basically a year since we last saw her! She's still as cute as ever, but is so tall and such a good talker now! And her hair is so long! We also had lunch with Brian's best friend, Dan and his wife Suzanne. So, although there were several injuries, it was very productive as far as seeing people and making memories goes!

Happy 3rd Birthday Oliver!

2011-03-05T20:01:00.000-08:00

Our sweet, big boy, Oliver turned 3 years old yesterday! He is so smart! He remembers much of what he sees and hears. He oftens tells me about something that we did weeks ago, and I'm the one saying, "Oh, ya! You're right, we did do or see that." He's now also getting old enough to use his smarts in witty ways. When we're in his room getting ready for bed, he'll put his Daddy to bed, using all the exact same words that we use when we put him to bed. Ollie is also big enough to operate the computer all by himself and he loves it. He will play on a site we found, called Zoodles, all day long if I'd let him. He knows how to double click the icon to get it started and is great at controlling the mouse. He often sits there and does Zoodles with Dexy while I get stuff done. It's so nice that he's becoming not only independent, but a helper as well. Ollie loves helping me make food. Any time he sees me in the kitchen, he runs over and says, "what are you making?" Then he says, "Oh, I need to get a tsair," and pulls a little chair over to help. He is our rule keeper. He'll remind even Brian and I of things that we need to be doing like, "Be a little bit quiet, Daddy," at bedtime or "oh, we need stickers for sleeping all night long" to me. He won't go to sleep until he's picked up all his toys and books on his bedroom floor and everything is in just the right order. He still has an unending love for blasting tunes and having a dance party. He not only doesn't mind my obsessions, but he often really gets into them with me (think back to the "we should buy some Harry Potter plates" video or the fact that he'll watch silly youtube videos with me over and over and over). And he still loves jumping off of everything he can. He's a sweet big brother and is good to share and take turns. He's just so spectacular! So yesterday for his birthday, we had a little family party for him.

I made his cake during naptime, but I knew he wasn't sleeping. As soon as I turned on the beaters to get it all whipped together, I heard his door open. He had been in his room for about an hour, so I said, "Hey Ollie, do you want to come down here and help me finish making your cake?" He responded with a very enthusiastic, "Ya!" and came running down the stairs. He helped me beat the cake and then got to lick the beaters. Always the best part!

It was so delicious that when some of the batter dropped from the beaters to the counter, he just HAD to lick that stuff up, too! It was made entirely from scratch and tasted pretty darn good if you ask me (not to brag, or anything). Then we got the cake baking and played Zoodles while we waited for it to finish and the party to start.

Grammy and Granpy came and so did Derek's family. All Oliver wanted for his birthday was a Dora and Diego cake, so my mom went above and beyond and bought Diego party plates and party blowers as well as Dora and Diego stickers. It made all the kids so excited. Even Alice looked pretty pleased about the whole thing.

Here is how Ollie's Dora and Diego cake turned out. Wasn't the most fabulous cake ever created, but it looked really cute and tasted really, really good.

No longer does Oliver have a fear of people singing "Happy Birthday." It use to freak him out, but last night when I asked if he was ready for cake he said, "Ya, let's sing Happy Birthday!" He loved every second of it and then blew out his candles one at a time, very meticulously.

For Jude's birthday, Ollie was the only child to use a fork, but last night he threw all care to the wind and just picked his cake up and went for it!

Yummy! Happy Birthday to me!

Everyone really enjoyed it. Dexy downed his piece before striking a cheesy smile for the camera.

He got some great presents. Derek and Cristina got him this phone that he loves and in fact took to bed with him tonight. Then he also wanted a Dora phone from my Mom and Dad when he went to the store with her yesterday to get the party stuff. They also got him a cute play doh set with little letter stamps and lots of colors. And he got a couple of outfits for the warm weather that is coming already. And just because he is really seeming to go tall lately.

We had a grand old time. We love you so much, big boy, and are so glad that you came to our family. You fill our lives with wit, cleverness, order, a little danger, and lots of love!!!

2 Little Monkeys Jumping on the Bed

2011-03-03T14:35:00.000-08:00

On the 25th of February, my boys got into an all out jump-fest on Ollie's bed. His bed was wet, so I went into his room to strip the sheets. They followed me into Ollie's room, so I turned on their kids songs and gathered up the dirty blankets and sheets and took them downstairs. When I came back, my 2 little monkies who were sitting on the bed, really started going. I turned the music up for them and they started rockin' out to nursery rhymes. They were jumping and flopping and singing. When a song when end, they'd stop and clap and say "yay!" And when the next song started they'd yell out, "Dance!" (or DA! if you're Dexy) and then start back into jumping with vigor! Then they were going to the edge of the bed to hold onto the dresser while they jumped extra high. But they both wanted to jump by the dresser and there's only room for one, so I had them take turns. And Dexy started being the turn moniter for us. He'd run up to the dresser, jump a few times, and then raise his hand and say, "ah, Doo!" This meant it was Ollie's turn (for some reason, Dexy calls Ollie "Doo"). Then Dexy would run to the wall and let Ollie have his turn jumping by the dresser. After a few jumps, Dexy would raise his hand and say, "ah, De!" Then he'd take his turn. Then, "ah, Doo!" meant Ollie's turn again. And then, "ah, De!" and he did this over and over. It was so, so, so precious! I recorded a video of him doing it for over 2 minutes because I just couldn't get over how precious it was. And no one worry - I stayed right by them the whole time and they don't jump on the bed without me in the room (probably mostly because they won't play in Ollie's room for very long unless I'm near by). I know it's dangerous. I keep a close eye on them. They were just having so much fun this time around that I didn't want to put an end to it.

Whatever Keeps You Sleeping

2011-03-03T14:10:00.000-08:00

I love going into my boys rooms at night to look at them sleeping. Brian often thinks that I'm weird, but I can't help myself when I know that I'll find things like this. They are just so funny about what they find comfortable. If having your Toby the tram engine on your face makes you sleep, then it's fine with me! It looks like we'll have to keep following Toby on his many random adventures.

And if you want to be all askew and you feel comfy that way, then carry on! I still find sleeping children to be so adorable. I have always loved staring at my sleeping babies and I think it's possible that I'm not going to grow out of it. They're just too cute!

Children Are So Funny

2011-02-28T21:12:00.001-08:00

Last week my silly boys were at their best! Ollie, totally naked, crawling up on the counter to lick frosting out of a bowl.
And Dexy, so excited for his bath, that he just walked into the bathroom and crawled into the tub, without a pause or a moment of hesitation.

Totally clothed, socks and all! He crawled right over me and climbed in. We all laughed so hard. Then, he realized that his clothes were sopping wet and heavy, so he finally decided that bathing with them on wasn't such a good idea. My cute, silly boys! I love them tons!

Parade of Homes! Oh, I mean, Parade Homes.

2011-02-28T20:37:00.000-08:00

Cristina and I had so much fun doing Parade of Homes, doh! Parade Homes this year. I've never actually done it before, but have been wanting to for the last while. She loves it, asked me if I wanted to go, and when I said yes, she wrote it on my calander and kept on me about going. I'm so glad!! It was great! We will do it again next year. While we were leaving the gianormous, totally unoriginal, no personality, $4.3 million mansion (it really was lame) we found this amazing chainsaw!
It was so HUGE! It looked super rough, tough, and powerful. So we of course had to get pictures by it to be associated with something so spectacular! It was by far one of the coolest things we say the whole time we were doing Parade Homes.

While out and about, we saw some things that were really only just nice to look at for us. There were tons of things that we will never have, nor would we ever want. The up keep at some of these places would be astronomical! I don't want to have to clean or maintain such lavishness. All though, the hot tub nestled in the forest, without a neighbor in sight was quite cool!

Then there were somethings that were much more livable and realistic. We did get some good ideas for our own home wish lists. A) the bathroom should be roomy and luxurious and 2 shower heads in a big shower is a must. One day we took Ollie and Jude to one house, and one house only. They did a good job, but it was so hard to make sure that they didn't touch a thing. The house we went to was fairly empty though and they were behaved and had fun. That shower that they were in was big. The little nook fit both of them. B) a little sort of sitting area in the master bedroom would be quite nice.

C) there needs to be some specific place to put your fruit where people can find it easily and actually eat it, but it won't get all gross on the counter - fruit baskets in the kitchen island is so genius! D) a dry sauna will not happen, but a big shower where you can close out the cold air is important. E) tons of natural light flooding the house and F) a kitchen truly fit for a chef and a family at the same time. We cook a lot in our family and almost all of it is from scratch, so we need a serious kitchen. The one in this picture was a favorite of mine. Oh, and one big, deep sink in the kitchen, not a divided one, plus a water tap over the cook top. And we just found this little kids nook to be quite fabulous! There were 2 little arm chairs and a TV up there. Too cute!

Random Cuteness

2011-02-19T08:14:00.000-08:00

Dexy sleeping with his bum way up in the air - I still love my sleeping babies and find them so cute, even if they aren't really babies anymore!
Ollie giving loves to his cute cousin. He always refers to her as, "Oh, Baby Alice!"

Toby parked precariously on a slat right in the middle of the living room blinds. Ollie's handywork. I just found this so cute and distinctively Ollie.

Yesterdays clothing choices. The boys have been kind of sick lately, so I think that they just really wanted to be comfy. They got up and had breakfast and were kind of messy and smelly like pee, so I let them sit in the sink to get clean and play. Then, after they were all clean and fresh, these are the clothes the picked. Ollie would only wear jammies. These aren't the jammies that he wore all night. He specifically picked out new, clean jammie to wear as his clothes. And Dexy didn't really want to wear anything, but he finally (after much crying) agreed to wear his tiger shirt and his red diaper, no pants!

Ollie chillin' in our bed by his daddy just this morning while rocking out to the tunes on Brian's phone. I love his feet thrown up over my pillow that he moved and placed there purposefully.

Video Post

2011-02-14T14:05:00.000-08:00

My boys are very funny! I love them tons! But, I don't get around to posting videos very often. Partly because it takes a while for them to load and partly because I think that sometimes people won't find them as fabulous as I find them. But, I guess I will give these a try. I just love them and think that they are cute, funny boys and want everyone else to appreciate them, too. Sorry if they are too long. Here goes nothing.

I don't know if I've already told this story on my blog, but it's funny so I have to make sure we get it recorded. This happened a while ago now. But we had put the boys in bed and I had lots of dishes to do, so I wanted to have something that I like to watch while I did them. I love Harry Potter (as my blog followers have seen), but Brian teases me about watching the movies all the time. That night I just wanted to watch a Harry Potter movie while I did the dishes, so I went and stood in our door frame and asked Brian, "if you come into the kitchen, will you make fun of my if I'm watching Harry Potter again?" Brian said, "no" and then immediately after we heard, "Oh, mommy! No more Harry Potter!" floating down from the loft! Ollie was not only out of his room, but he heard us, and he responded perfectly (his daddy has trained him to say that to me)! It was hilarious!! The next morning, we were flipping through a party supply catalog when I came across some Harry Potter plates. In an attempt to undo his Daddy's training, I acted like they were the coolest thing ever. He got the idea! Maybe someday I'll get to watch the movies without him "scolding" me all the time.

Brian was flipping through the channels the other day and we came across a gymnastics meet. I asked him to leave it there for a minute to see if Ollie would respond the way I thought he would. He did!

Dexy dancing to the theme song of his favorite show, Team UmiZoomi. I love the way kids dance! It's so not really dancing, but so precious!

Dexy did this with his balloon over and over and over, but as soon as I started recording he of course stopped. At least I got it once. It was funny and it kept him entertained for a while.

I love you my clever, cute, funny boys!

More Family Fun

2011-02-11T22:04:00.001-08:00

Jude Oliver's 2nd birthday was yesterday, so we went to Derek's house to celebrate with them. They had a small family party with Cristina's mom and sister, and my family and my mom. It was nice and the perfect kind of party for a new 2 year old - familiar, comfortable and not too overwhelming, but still fun and special. We watched videos of little, baby Jude, which reinforced to us how much Jude and Alice really do look almost exactly like each other. It seems like our boys were all teeny babies just the other day and now they are all getting so big and grown up. I think this is a fabulous idea and will probably be stealing it for my boys' birthdays.

The boys had such a good time playing in the little tent and tunnel that Jude got for his birthday.
They found the tunnel to be most excellent!

Then we had pizza for dinner and sang to Jude. Cristina made him this amazing Kermit cake herself. Jude loves the old school Muppet Show, so she did this just for him to make his birthday cake exactly what he wanted. It was so cute!

Jude blew out both of his candles and then got served his piece of cake and dived right in. He opted for the "just pick it up and shove it in" method.

Dexy choose the "stick your finger in it and lick it off" method.

Ollie, as our resident big boy, used a fork.

Yumm! Birthday cake.

Then it was time to open all of his presents (a harder part for the boys who weren't getting presents, but they handled themselves very well)......

......and play with them! Cristina found this little bubble blower for only $3 and it was instantly worth ever penny. I'd say that each boy had a dollars worth of fun in the 5 minutes that it worked before it got bubbles in it and needed to dry out. And they'll have more fun with it again, I'm sure.

We had a great time! It has gotten us ready for our run of birthdays. We will now be celebrating birthdays every single month through June. But that's fine by us. We love parties!

Ollie's Quiet Time

2011-02-11T21:51:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I put both of the boys in their rooms for nap/quiet time. Brian was at class. I started in on the dishes. As I was just washing away in a quiet house, I all of a sudden heard, "T, t," the sounds of Starfall.com floating down over the loft. Ollie had come out of his room, climbed up into the computer chair, double clicked on the internet icon, clicked on the Starfall icon on the favorites bar, and started playing Starfall all by himself!! He is just getting so big all of a sudden. I only heard him do about one letter and then it was quiet again. After a couple of minutes, there was a break in the show that I was watching where I could hear a deep breathing coming from upstairs. I thought to myself, "did he fall asleep playing Starfall that fast?" And sure enough, he had. He was snoozing away in the comfy chair. After Dexy woke up, he wanted to go upstairs to play so I let him thinking that if Ollie woke up it would be ok, but Ollie kept sleeping for another 5 or 10 minutes, until Dexy and I were loudly playing blocks and Brian was on the computer. He must have needed the extra sleep that day!

Fun With Family

2011-02-11T21:24:00.000-08:00

Life has returned to normal, or at least to where it was before all the madness. I have restored our computer and nothing was lost (so glad I made the back up discs as soon as I noticed it was struggling). Brian still has a mound of homework everyday, but we're both getting use to what that means. Oliver is sleeping sooooo much better. I have adjusted his schedule. First, he was still just all messed up from the holidays, so we finally got bedtime back to about 8:30 where it should be. Second, I have started more closely monitering his "quiet time." He goes into his room to play quietly and rest. After an hour, I go in to check on him. If he's still awake then his quiet time can be done because he must not need the extra sleep that day. If he's asleep, I leave him, but make sure that he doesn't sleep for more than an hour and a half, waking him up if necessary. He is sometimes pretty unhappy with me for waking him up, but it's much better in the long run. We also had to just divide the boys. Ollie is still in the upstairs room, but we offically moved Dexy to the room downstairs. I cleaned it up a lot (it's still very full of stuff, but at least he won't feel as crowded) and we moved his crib in there. Both boys have been sleeping much better and are much happier about their new sleeping arrangments. So, we got back to trying to relax and enjoy life. It was easy to do when we had some chances to play with family. On the 4th, my grandparents and Mom invited my family and Derek's family over to their place for a most delicious dinner. It was so yummy! The kids all love playing at Grandma 2's house. After dinner, we went downstairs to play a little bit more before heading home and it got wild.
Derek and Brian helped the boys get into an all out bean bag battle. They all loved every minute of it. Bean bags were flying everywhere and boys were laugh histerically. It was so fun!

Then, the very next morning the boys got to wake up to Brian's family. They stopped here for a couple of days on their way to Disneyland (I know - we didn't get to go:( but it was fun to see them and the boys probably aren't quite old enough anyway). Every time we see them, Grandma Bowles has a whole bag of poppers for them. They love them and want to do them every second that they're here. The started with the poppers as soon as they woke up. They couldn't even wait to get dressed. They threw poppers several times through out the day.

We went to Chuck A'Rama for dinner. Ollie wanted to go in the "sabbudon" so we moved his seat and Angela rode with us. The whole way to the resturant and the whole way back home, Dexy had to hold Angela's hand. If she put her hand down, he'd hold his hand out and say, "ha!" (his word for hand) to get her to hold his hand again. And on the way home he fell asleep while holding hands. It was so precious!

And then of course, to finish off the day of fun with Brian's fam, they had to convince Grandma to let them throw the last 2 boxes of poppers, even though it was dark. That actually made it pretty spectacular though, because we could see them spark when they hit the ground. It's always so nice to play with family!

Easier Said Than Done!

2011-02-03T13:52:00.000-08:00

It's been a while since my last post. I tried to give myself a new, energizing, hopeful mantra when I last spoke with myself, but like most things, it was far easier to tell myself that than it has been to actually put it into everyday practice. Since then, my computer picked up a virus; I almost lost my 240 page digital photo book again (lost it last time my computer crashed and had to do the whole thing over - almost ripped all my hair out at the thought of having to do it a third time, but fortunately I uploaded and ordered it just in time; the silver lining to all this); my computer crashed; I have backup discs, but they aren't being so cooperative; my boys seem to be usually fighting, screaming, whining, crying, toy snatching, etc; Ollie is still having sleep issues, so much in fact that about a week ago we removed Dexy from their room to a playpen in the then completely full junk room at 5 am, at which point Oliver proceeded to scream for an hour and a half; he did the same thing the following two nights, although he is getting better now; I've had to clean out at least part of the junk room so that Dexy had a place to sleep without feeling like the room was going to collapse on him; Brian is always at school, doing homework, at scouts, playing men's basketball, etc. as he gets into his upper level classes and does all of the duties for his calling; the house seems to be in a continual state of upheaval; there has been a unending flow of urine and blood (no worries - just potty training and lots of minor toddler injuries); and now it's February and it's my month to do sharing time and I am not even prepared and it's Thursday!!!!!!! I know that this is all just one long, exhausting, whiney sentence, but that's the way things have been going around here lately. And I have no pictures because I'm still trying to get our computer up and working and it's not currently reading the SD card from our camera. So now I must reiterate to myself, more forcefully this time - IT DOES NOT HAVE TO BE PERFECT!! RELAX AND ENJOY THE RIDE AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE! JUST CHILL OUT!! Maybe I should look into finding some diazepam. OK, or maybe I should just go lay on my bed and stare blankly at the ceiling for 5 minutes before it's time for the boys to get up from their naps. Sorry you all had to deal with this, but I feel better now that I've let all of this out!

Everything Can't, And Shouldn't, Be Perfect

2011-01-20T20:58:00.000-08:00

Yesterday we had a fabulous day! That statement might make the title seem confusing, but I'll explain. This is mostly a memo to myself. I hope that others may gleen some wisdom out of it, but if not, at least I will have this thought preserved when I need a reminder later. You see, I often get caught up in needing to do everything perfectly and that's just never going to happen. Got that me - you are NOT EVER going to be 100% in this life and that's OK. Let the unimportant things go and focus on the moments in life that matter. And now, I'll explain.

My boys have been driving each other, and therefore me, crazy lately. I finally realized what I already knew (or maybe I just decided that I it was worth it to put the effort into it) - my boys are getting older and need more engagement in their day. So yesterday morning, we got up and started our day with beautiful music and coloring and cutting. Then we got dressed and in our stroller and headed to the park. We played at the park for a good long time, came home, actually ate a good lunch (they usually just don't eat very much at lunch) while I let them watch only one episode of Dora. Then it was nap time and they went to sleep quietly and quickly. After naps, they got up and we went outside again on a meadering walk to get our mail. We were outside walking for another good chunk of time when my mom called me to find us so she could show us her new-to-her (used) car. It's beautiful, by the way. We went for a ride. The boys really like go for rides with Grammy and it was even more exciting that it was a new car.

When we got back from our ride to Target, Derek's family was over for our fun celebration of Edger Allen Poe's birthday. In our toddler approved attempt at the macabre, we watched the movie Coraline and made dirt cups. The boys helped pound the chocolate grahams into crumbs while Cristina and I made the pudding. Then we got to dig into the mess.

Mud (pudding), dirt (chocolate Goldfish), and worms - not super macabre, but toddler appropriate, at least on the right lines, and yummy!

Ollie actually ate a couple of his super sour worms. I was so impressed!

Jude was all about the pudding!! So much so that he kept taking everyone's spoons in an attempt to get more pudding in every bite!

It took Dexy a while to warm up to any of it, but once he realized that it was delicious food, he dove in. We all had a fun time just watching the movie, chatting, and seeing the kids enjoy their deliciously messy treat. After everyone went home, I got the boys wiped down and into jammies, read a few stories, said prayers and they went to bed without a fuss. And that's a lot at this point. My boys have always been really good about bedtime, but recently Ollie has been unable to wind down, stop talking or screaming, and actually fall asleep until about 10:45! That's crazy late! It was a big part of my "hammer to the head" moment telling me that it was time to do something different. But last night, they was hardly a peep out of them after I shut their door. Then I went downstairs and my house looked like this.......

......toys were scattered everyone from playing with their cousin and having such a grand time.

And the kitchen was a mess from having people over for pizza and a fun, messy treat.

Then I looked down and my shirt looked like this. Now, this picture does not do it justice. It was covered in chocolate pudding splatters, dirt from the park, snotty nose spots, you name it. At that instant I thought to myself, "Wow! Disgusting! Everything is a filthy mess." And then in the very next moment, I had another "hammer to the head" moment where I realized that this was not the shirt of a filthy, disgusting housewife. No, no. This was the shirt of a good mom whose toddlers had had an engaging, active, fabulous day! And then I realized, everything can't be perfect. Nor should it be. If my house and shirt were spotless, then my kids would probably have had a much less fulfilling and stimulating day. And I choose my kids! Then I wore my dirty shirt proudly as I cleaned up the toys and did the sink full of dishes. And you know what, it didn't take all that long to clean up the mess, especially with my sweet husband's help, and the great day that we had had, will last much longer!

These are the moments that really matter! Remember me - focus in on what's really important, let some stuff go, and just try to enjoy the ride!

Blue Skies

2011-01-18T22:53:00.000-08:00

The weather was beautiful on Monday. The sky was blue and the sun was out and eventhough it's January, it wasn't even that cold. It was also a holiday, so Brian and Derek didn't have class. We therefore decided to get together. We put our boys tricycles in our trunk and headed over to Derek and Cristina's apartment out in Ivins. After Alice had been fed and could be left happily with the daddies, Cristina and I took the boys out to the parking lot behind their building to ride their trikes. We had a grand old time! They rode and pushed their trikes and filled their baskets full of rocks, played peek-a-boo from the garbage area (lovely, I know), found ledges for jumping off, and chased after balls. We were all so happy at that moment (as well as just in general) to be living in St. George where we could go outside in January to find not only no snow, but blue skies, only cool weather, and a lovely day!!

Being a Boy is in the DNA

2011-01-14T22:10:00.000-08:00

Marie and her boys came down to St. George and stayed with us for a couple of days. They left this afternoon. We had tons of fun playing with 4 of our fun boy cousins! We went out to say goodbye as they drove away and Ollie and Dexy of course found their way into the dirtiest spot in front of our house.
Not only are the sitting on the black, but in one of the few remaining patches of disgusting parking lot snow, and right up by the curb where it's most filthy! The best part? Shortly after snapping these pictures they started EATING the disgusting parking lot snow!! I certainly didn't give them this kind of idea. It just comes in boy DNA!

New Year's Day

2011-01-10T14:27:00.000-08:00

OK, so here is what we did for our New Year's Day festivites. We went to a big snowy hill and strapped our feet into death traps!

Just kidding! They weren't death traps, but I did fall......a lot..........a really lot. Ben's family has snowboards and these little skiis, so he and Amanda had a great idea to take us up the Salt Lake Canyon to try them out. Since the boys didn't really love it when we tried sledding, we left them at home with Grandma to eat lunch and take a nap while we hit the slopes. Only Ben has ever done any of this stuff before.

That became very obvious as the rest of us fell all over the place and he glided down the hill with grace.

I tried the skiis first and didn't do too, bad. Then I took a shot on one of the snowboards and fell so many times it wasn't funny. But, when I did stay up on it, the board went way fast, which was a fun ride. For a few seconds anyway. Brian stuck to the snowboard. Amanda and Angela stuck to the skiis. Ben did a little of both, too. And it wasn't even as cold as we thought it would be. It was a fun, adventurous, active way to kick off the New Year!

Belated Christmas Break Post

2011-01-08T23:38:00.000-08:00

I haven't done a post in a really long time! We had lots of fun up North playing with the Bowles clan for a couple of weeks and I have lots of pictures that I was going to post sooner. However when we got home, I found myself buried under a moutain of new toys to put away, a truck-bed full of our stuff that my parents brought down for us, and for some reason tons and tons of dirty laundry eventhough I had gotten most of the stuff from the trip clean before we came home. We have been spending many a day rearranging, organizine, washing, folding, and trying to find a place to fit everything. So anyway. Here's some more pictures from our fun up North. It was Grandma Bowles' idea to fold only one side of this table down and turn it into a slide. The boys thought it was spectacular that all of a sudden there was a slide! Cool Grandma, huh?
After sliding a few times, the took to running down it....one right after the other. We quickly had to implament turns to ensure safety. The had a ball playing on this thing!

We visited Great Grandma and Grandpa Bowles. Grandpa showed the boys his train. The were blown away by it!

Ollie especially loves trains right now, but they both like them and thought that a small, real moving train was the most amazing thing ever.

Great Grandma Bowles even showed them how to get down on the floor and take a closer look.

After all the excitement, Dexy had to chillax in this old fashioned rocking chair. I feel like this picture should be in black and white and in some really large, old world frame.

Then Great Grandpa Bowles took us to the near by parking lot where hundreds of birds wait for him to come and feed them everyday. And yes. That is a gianormous bucket of bird seed that he is carrying over to random parking lot pigeons. Odd? Of course......

.....but the boys had their brains wrinkled once again by something that they have never seen before. Again, they were fascinated. We love playing with the Bowles side of the family!

Then on the 30th of December, we went to the fabulous, new home of Brian's MTC companion, John Forsythe. Johny 5, as we call him, and his sweet wife Hailey and their little boy Landon, are good friends of ours. We had a great time. We did some catching up, ate delicious dinner, they boys had great fun playing with their long last friend (it's been a while since we've seen the 5s) and even got to take a bath together.

After bath time, they were all cozied and clean in their jammies, Hailey made them popcorn and got them all drinks and they got to watch some Shrek 4 and stay up late while we had some grown-up friend time, too. We had a sleep over, even! The boys did a great job sleeping there. I was so well pleased in them. And it was so nice for Brian and I to have real beds to sleep on, even 2 twin beds, rather than the bean bags and air mattress that we had been sleeping on for 2 weeks.

The next morning, we got up to Johny 5 and Hailey making us pancakes and hasbrowns. Then we bundled the kids up and attempted to take them sledding. There was a big hill really close to their house, so we just went there. And it was a good thing. It was sooooooooo cold!! Oliver basically hated the whole experience.

Dexy found a little joy in the sledding, but mostly just sat motionless and expressionless. I think he was trying to perserve his energy so that more could go to warming himself.
Our boys had more fun sliding down the cold, icey slide than sledding. Even that didn't last very long though. After only about 10 minutes, all the babies were totally finished with the freezing, winter wonderland experience.

Dexy and Landon let Johny 5 give them one last ride from the playground back up the hill to the car. Mental note to self: I took this sled down the hill once. It was wicked fast and totally awesome. Look into getting one. Johny 5 says that they are straight out of Canda. Probably going to have to start there to track one down.

After our fun in the cold, we all had to warm ourselves with cups of hot chocolate and snuggling on the couch while watching Mickey Mouse Clubhouse. Landon even cuddled up to me. He's a fun, happy, friendly kid. I'm a fan! I'm so glad that we got to go spend some time with friends. We had a fabulous time! We had lots of fun up there. I still have to post the pictures of our New Years Day celebrations, but my lower back is killing me, so I'll have to do it another day. Hopefully I'll dig myself out of all the house work I've been doing and have time not only soon, but preferrably not at 1:25 am.