UPDATED!

I've had quite a few things I've wanted to post, but have been quite the blogging slacker!!! Alas, I'm finally updated and feeling good. Take a look !

Dinner Conversations...

So, here's what we had for dinner last night: "mexican meat", spanish rice, and tortillas. Mexican meat is just cut up steak in a brown gravy with green peppers, onion and garlic. I'm sure there's a better name for it, but that's what my family has always called it. Anyways, I spent quite a while preparing this meal and this is what I hear out of my 2 year old when he sits down to the table and looks at his plate...

IT'S POOP!

Thanks, Parker :)

Miss Smarty Pants

Ok, this is just me being a proud momma. I know lots of kids her age are reading, but...I'm so happy! Her preschool teacher realized she was trying to sound out words and could actually read quite a few of them, so she gave her "Bob" books to me to use with Samantha to help her learn to really read. Bob books are just the ones you use for beginning readers. They're great. There's 12 books in the first set and Samantha can read all of them. Good job, Samantha!

Spring...Already?

This past week has been absolutely gorgeous! We've taken quite a few trips to the park and had lots of outside time at our house. We even had a picnic! Up until a couple days ago, you would have thought spring had come :) I liked it! I do feel like we skipped a winter though. I don't mind. We have yet to see snow at our house. SOOO different from last year! Anyways, on one of our beautiful days we took a family walk to the park and spent some time in the sunshine. Samantha rode her bike and loved it. She always looks for opportunities to ride somewhere. She's getting better, just needs a little more leg strength to get up some of our hills. Here's some pictures of one of our trips to the park this past week!

Valentine's Day Party

Samantha had her first Valentine's Day party as a school (preschool) goer this year. They were encouraged to make their own valentines for their classmates. Of course, Sam was soooo excited to do this. Anything artsy is her favorite thing to do. She paints and colors/draws daily. Anyways, right when she walked in the house the day they talked about it, she told me all about it and said she wanted to make them right then. So, I got out her paints and put down our "art" tablecloth and she got to work. Her idea was to cut out and paint hearts. I drew the hearts and she cut them out and painted them. She decided she wanted them to be rainbow hearts. She also did a very good job of writing each persons name on theirs and also hers to let them know who it was from. It took quite a while, being that she made 12 of them, but she was very pleased and happy with her work. I was too. And, of course Parker had to put his spin on his own valentines as well...

Here she is before her party. She wore her heart shirt and bows. She was as happy as can be!

Checking out her goodies when she got home.

Hope everyone had a lovely Valentine's Day!!!

Leavenworth

A few weekends ago we decided to take a little drive out to a small Bavarian village called, Leavenworth. It's a couple hour drive, but we thought we could do some sledding on the way. We stopped on Snoqualmie pass to sled, but realized you could only sled in a designated area that cost $20 to use. We knew our kids wouldn't last long, so we decided it wasn't worth it. Instead, we continued to drive towards Leavenworth and stopped at the Ensign Ranch that's just right off the freeway to let the kids just play in the snow. We figured it was better than nothing and the kids would at least get some time in the snow. We ate our lunch that I had packed and after a while of playing and being pulled around in the sled, we continued our journey to Leavenworth! Our stay wasn't too long, but it was a lot of fun and just a great family outing. We shopped around a bit and got a pretzel to snack on. The kids each got to pick out a toy at the toy shop and we took some time to enjoy the scenery and take some pictures. It was a spontaneous trip, but turned out wonderfully! Here's some pictures we took of our outing.

First REAL Haircut

I feel like all I post about is Collin these days...Well, I do, but there's no favoritism behind it, I promise! Well, Collin had another first on Sunday morning. His first haircut! He had a mini one a long time ago, which consisted of snipping one little tuft of hair on the top of his head that was extremely long, compared to the rest, and stood straight up. So, we took the scissors to it and that was about it. Very simple. But, on Sunday morning, before church, we decided it was a little unruly and out of control. It can get really BIG and stand up REALLY high! It's was pretty funny. I kept thinking it would grow out and calm down, but it hasn't really. SO, we took the clippers to it. I was hesitant, but Jeremy was all for it. Here's how it went...

BEFORE:

(If you want to see another "big hair" picture...refer back a couple posts ago, to "Collin's 9 months!")

AFTER:

It does accentuate his cheeks a little, but I think he looks quite handsome!

Scootin' Along

My boys have this thing with scooting and hopping around as babies...Parker was famous for hopping around on his knees until he was about 14 months, when he finally started walking. He did his fare share of crawling as well, but did a TON of hopping. Now, we have Collin. I've shared with you all about his lack of movement. He has yet to crawl, but has figured out a "different" way to get around. He's a scooter! He loves to scoot on his bottom. It's silly, but he gets where he wants to go and has a great time doing it! He rolls as well, but lately thoroughly enjoys scooting. I got some good video tonight of him demonstrating this move. Here he is in action!