The Hottness of Pink Eye

No, I'm not winking at you. Just a mild case of conjunctivitis (pretty sure).

The unfortunate thing is that I actually have to venture out in public looking like this tomorrow to go to the doctor (and depending how desperate I am, Target too)! Hopefully no one gags and chokes on their food while catching a glimpse of my mini-eye.

I feel like my left eye is all pregnant-puffy. I think I'd rather have these eyes...

Then again... maybe not.

(Poor guy was about to have an aneurysm just squinting hard enough to keep those things in place.)

We're in a Contest!

UPDATE!!! We're actually in the FINALS now! IF YOU ALREADY VOTED, PLEASE VOTE AGAIN! A new album for finals has been created and your vote counts twice if you vote again under the new picture. Link is updated below. Thank you, thank you, thank you!

One of our photos was chosen for a "Best of 2010" photo contest.

This one, actually...

And how do we win? Well that's where your help comes in...

The contest is on facebook, on Kalli Barker Photography. She has a photo album with all the final entries, and which ever photo has the most "likes" wins.

And what does the winner get? She hinted that the winner will receive a custom gift.... a way to display the winning photo, valued at $100 to $175. Wahoo!

So here is where I ask you to HELP us - please?

1. go here and "like" Kalli Barker Photography: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Kalli-Barker-Photography/109411892430292

2. go here and click "like": http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=175709985800482&set=a.175709425800538.34821.109411892430292&pid=374771&id=109411892430292#!/photo.php?fbid=175709985800482&set=a.175709425800538.34821.109411892430292

That's it... easy peasy, right? There's some tough competition (I actually "liked" another photo other than ours too... the photo of the grandparents was too sweet to pass up). Anyway... any votes are MUCH appreciated. Thanks!

PS) I think we're tied for 5th place.... Update: we're behind now! Please vote again!
PPS) The contest ends this Sunday at 10 pm

Stop Growing Lincoln!

Actually I should say, "Stop developing Lincoln!" but who says that? That's a bit nerdy. Lincoln has actually slowed in growth... I don't think he's gained weight for two months now.

Over Christmas break Lincoln pulled himself to standing position on the bottom step of a stair case and I about had a heart attack. I thought it was something fluky and that it wouldn't happen again for a while.

Then on Wednesday while playing in the living room Logan shouted, "Mom! Look at Linky!" And this is what I saw... ...Linc just standing there like it's no big deal, digging pretty seriously for a good piece of wood to suck on.
I have forgotten how many "firsts" there are for little guys and how excited I get every time I see him do something new.
He has his 9 mo check up in a few weeks, but here are some new things about him so far:

• He started army crawling back in November and a couple weeks ago he started crawling on all fours. He's still slow at it, but makes his way around the house. He usually will make his way to the bathroom, even if we're not there.
• Mid December he started sitting himself up from a laying position.
• He has started reaching his arms out for us a little bit if he wants to be picked up.
• If you say, "Kissies" he'll open his mouth and lean in for kisses on the lips.
• And this isn't anything new, but he absolutely adores his brother and loves playing with him, especially now that he can tag along a little better.
• He loves anything stick-ish. Especially Logan's tools, hammers, screwdrivers, wrenches and his little rattle. He also loves balls.
• He's a smiley guy, and you can usually see his little incisor teeth hanging down on top, but not his front teeth, so he looks like a vampire, but I don't have any pics of that.
  

Here are some pics and videos just for fun.

Loves bath time

Thanks to Logan, he became Super Linc for a night

My Little Sunbeamer!

Logan is officially out of nursery!

Last Sunday was his first Sunday as a Sunbeam and he was SO EXCITED. I was a little emotional as I dropped him off to sit with his class and realized he was going to be just fine and I had to leave. That was one of the hardest parts for me when I was released from Primary a couple months ago... knowing that I wasn't going to get to experience Primary with Logan. But I was so proud of him and how big he is and how much he has grown in the past year. I'm sure the Sunbeam teachers have their work cut out for them.

Before church
You can't tell me he's not handsome. :-)

A couple months ago he kept begging me for his own scriptures. I was going to wait for Christmas but I caved in a bought just an inexpensive Book Of Mormon and I found that red scripture case at DI for about $1. Not too shabby.

After church
I've never been so proud of a piece of scribbled-on computer paper held together by staples. :-) I stashed it away for safe keeping in his little memory box.

Christmas

We traveled to Denver this year for Christmas (barely... our alternator went out the night before we were supposed to leave town) and boy was the whole vacation an adventure.

But first, this is a little view of what Christmas looked like around our house this year...

Logan's favorite ornament this year. This was an ornament I grew up with (my favorite). When you pinch the sides of Rudolph's cheeks his mouth opens. And almost everyday this year there was a Hershey's Kiss waiting to be eaten by Logan.

I've decided that I LOVE advent calendars. I think I have 5 different kinds of advents, two of which were new this year. I think a family with little ones around cannot have enough advent calendars. Doing the different advents was the highlight of Logan's day... every day.
This was an adorable advent that Andy made for my birthday this year. The funny thing is I was this close (imagine my thumb and index finger just centimeters apart...) to making my own. Luckily, I happened to call Andy while I was at the craft store (on my birthday) just about to buy all the supplies to make my own. She had to blow my big birthday present surprise on the phone so I wouldn't buy it all. :-)
We LOVED it Andy - thanks so much!

Up close view of some of the ornaments.

I added little papers in half of the pockets that listed a holiday tradition to do for that day, etc to do with our little family.

This is a little Santa boot that used to belong to my Grandma who passed away a few years ago. My mom sent it to me last year and I love it. I thought of her every time I washed my hands at the kitchen sink and looked up at the window sill.

These jingle bells were a HUGE hit this year too. One of the boys had them in hand at all times. We had another set of jingle bells that hung from our door know and I think Logan took those off the door at least once a day.

Then there was Peppernuts - a Nelson tradition. Peppernuts are little small, round, hard cookies that get made every Christmas season, and boy is it an experience.
Here's Riley with the dough and the boys looking on.

Every year Riley makes a Peppernut monster out of the dough and this was Linc's first Peppernuts night so he got eaten by the monster.

Logan cutting the snake getting ready to roll the little balls.

I think this was the first year we made gingerbread houses in the last 8 years since we've been married. Needless to say Logan LOVED it. If you can't tell, Ben made a fishing boat and river.


Then came the trip to Denver... I was feeling slightly queezy off and on the morning before we left for the road trip and thought I either (1) had some bad milk that morning or (2) was somehow miraculously pregnant. But sure enough on the road I ended up throwing up three times. An 8 hour drive turned into 11 hours. But whatever bug I had was about a 12 hour bug because I was fine by the time we got to Denver.

We had a Christmas party (Texas barbecue style) the day after we arrived. And we decided to have the kids make Reindeer cupcakes to help entertain them.
Logan saw these in a magazine and had been begging me ALL MONTH to make them. In fact, that was the first thing he asked Santa for in his letter.



Then Santa decided to drop by (good thing, because I didn't get a picture when Logan saw him the first time around at the mall...) I think Logan was a little shoked that Santa would come visit him personally.
He asked Santa for a monster bike, monster helmet, monster windshield wipers and green stab pinchers.

I think Logan asked Jera to read this story to him almost every night. It was a very sweet story called "The Christmas Miracle of Jonathan Toomey"

Then sure enough, a day later on Christmas Eve, Logan and Ben both got the same bug that I had. Poor Logi and his red barf bowl.
This picture represents about 17 episodes of throwing up between me, Ben ,Logan and Desi. :-) Ben's family has a history of hurl-fests at Christmas time, so this year was known as Hurl-Fest 2010.
Luckily Lincoln never got it, but he did manage to get a double ear infection while we were there. Wonderful!


Luckily Ben adn Lo were both fine by Christmas Eve night. The boys got matching snowman jammies from Marmie.

Aunt Desi and a tired Linc.

Then came Christmas morning.... last year we got the BEST reaction ever from Logan when he saw his big boy bed. So this year I was ready with camera in hand, video rolling and Logan starts coming down stairs and then all of a sudden my camera flashes, "MEMORY CARD FULL". What?! Are you kidding me? Of course I forgot to upload photos before we left town.
Anyway, so thanks to Dave and Jera's camera, we have Christmas morning photos! Luckily Logan had a very shy reaction this year, so I don't feel like I was missing out that much.

Lo's bike from Santa

Linc's toy truck from Santa




Trying out his new bike.


And his buddy across the street, Chase, got a new bike for Christmas too, so here they are riding together.


"Charlay bit me!" ha ha... except Logan really did bite Lincoln's finger and made him cry.

And then to top off all the adventure in Denver, I broke my toe falling down the stairs the last day we were there. It really wasn't that bad after the first day.
Logan had to have one toe nail painted too.

I've come to these conclusions:
1. We made horrible guests the whole weekend with our illnesses, crying, barfing, middle-of-the-night wake ups, etc.
2. It was so nice to be somewhere we felt at home. Ben's family was so great.
3. I love my boys a lot more during the day time than I do in the middle of the night.
4. The number of toys out there available for 3 year olds (most of which I knew Logan would absolutely love) was overwhelming and more than I could handle this year.
5. I am upgrading to a van sooner than later. Not being able to recline while being sick in a car is not my cup of tea.
6. I don't think I'll be pregnant any time in the near future. II forget how crappy it is being sick.
7. Bitter makes the sweet that much sweeter. In spite all our incidents during Christmas break, we still had so much fun and made lots of memories!

Be careful what you teach 'em

At nap time I read Logan a book called "The Sandwich Swap" (a really cute book, by the way). Anyway, at the end of the book I found my self explaining to Logan what "swap" means and demonstrated by trading him my hair elastic for his monkey. Then we, of course, traded back. He got it.

Fast forward to tonight.

Tonight for Family Home Evening we decided to whip out an already-prepared lesson and activity (courtesy of Maegan - thanks for the wonderful gift!) Well it seemed like a lesson on the topic of prayer is one he could understand fairly well, so that's what we went with.

We talked about how when you need help, or if you're sad or you need anything, you can pray to Heavenly Father and He will hear your prayers and answer them. He was tuned out part of the time, but I think he understood more than we thought he did.

Fast forward to post-bedtime.

Logan usually stays put in his bed at bed time, but got out of his bed once two nights ago, and again last night and, you guessed it, tonight again. So, wanting to nip this little habit in the bud, Ben sends Logan back to bed and threatens to take away his beloved Monkey and blanky if he gets out of bed again (the usual threat). Well, unfortunately a few minutes later Logan came out again, saying something about "yummy yummy munchy honey cakes" (which I later found out comes from The Wiggles movie that he watched two weeks ago. Random).

So having to follow through on his threat, Ben sent Lo back to bed and confiscated Monkey and blanky. LOTS of tears and crying ensued. I think it was maybe 5 or 10 minutes later Lo timidly wanders out of his room and comes and tells me so proudly, "Mommy, I prayed and asked Heavenly Father to get my Monkey and blanky back."

Crap. What on Earth am I supposed to do now? Follow through on consequences or be the means of answering my little guy's prayer? Of course that FHE lesson would come back to bite me in the butt...
Seeing that I was wavering, Logan then went and got a different monkey from his bed and brought it out, handed it to me and said, "Mom, I'll swap you this sock monkey for my other monkey with brown eyes...?"
Great. Now my choice of nap-time book selection is coming back to haunt me too.
So, I had no choice but to give his Monkey and blanky back . Smarty McFarty pants.

I was frustrated, shocked that he would come up with this solution, feeling proud and holding back laughter all at the same time. I guess this is a sign that he really is listening, learning and applying. :-)

Snow!

It snowed (and snowed, and snowed and snowed) the day before we left for Denver for Christmas. So amidst all our packing, Logan and I took a break to go play outside.

Meet Frosty. My child thinks of really original names, I know.

Lo's outfit makes me smile. I didn't do the whole matching-snow-outfit thing this year and if he doesn't care, I don't care. :-) In fact, I think we're going for the most-colors-worn award... I count 9. The pants, mittens and hat are from last year. The coat is from Costco. And the awesome Smurf-blue Thomas Train boots are a great goodwill find from Marmie.


I don't think he ever stopped singing Christmas songs the whole month of December...




It snowed 8-ish inches. 9 1/2 in the backyard. Does anyone else measure the snow like this? We would always do this growing up, checking again and again as we watched the snow pile up.




Lo's best attempt at a snow angel



Then Lincoln woke up from nap time and Logan wasn't close to being done playing. So I bundled Linc up and brought him out too.

First time in the snow. Not much reaction. But he is stinkin' cute, isn't he?



Then I laid him down in the snow...

... and this is what he thought about that.



Logan showing off the cool boots.

Right after this shot, Logan put a bunch of snow in Linc's face...

I think he loved it.



Me and the boys.


What a hunk.

As much as I don't really love the snow, I love that it makes me want to stay home, consume lots of hot-cocoa, feel all cozy inside, and so I can play with my boys more like this.