crib recall

have you heard about this simplicity crib recall? look for more details at this link to the Today Show...i think ours might be one of these...gotta check that out!

Back from CA...

we are back from CA and the kids are recovering! Ethan went into his room tonight around 6:45 and laid on his bed and our coversation went like this:
Me: (holding a crying Avery who doesn't like her reflux medicine i just gave her) "Whatcha doing Eth?"
Him: "laying down" (Gosh mom, can't you SEE what i'm doing?)
Me: "you are laying down?" (quick on the uptake there jen!)
Him: "yes, i want to go to bed"
Me: "you want to go to bed?" (very incredulously, which he didn't catch since he's 2)
Him: "yep"
Me: (still holding a crying Avery and Kendall is gone to Mutual by this time) "okay pick two books and let's read 'em!"

and the miracle of all is he actually did go to sleep. There is definitely something to be said for that. i'm not sure what that something is, but it needs to be said:)

as for the trip, it was great to see my family: my mom and dad, sister Erin and her two girls, and of course my brother and his family (whose house we were staying at). We had a great time, but if you ask me what i did on the trip, i'd have to say "i fed Avery pretty much the whole time" because everytime i turned around, i was feeding her again...three hours, three hours, three hours. that's how it's supposed to be, but it just felt like i was doing it a lot. which i do, but ...you get the picture!

Anyway, this Sunday we are blessing Avery and my mom and dad are coming down for that before my mom starts her chemotherapy, so that is the last time i will see her for awhile, unless i go sometime without germy kids or something, which doesn't seem that possible since i am nursing Avery, see above comment (three hours...three hours...three hours...). So that's our life today.

Good night.

new look...

so i jumped on the "change my blog layout" bandwagon. i think i like it! makes me want to figure out how to make one of my own, create it myself, but i don't think now is the time to take up HTML configuration!

CALIFORNIA DREAMIN'

Mostly because it is going to be mid to low 70's and i will get to see my family and especially my mom and my brother's family (who i haven't seen in a while plus i've never seen their house) i am really excited to go on our trip. we leave friday morning and get back on monday so if we are MIA that is why! hope you all have a great weekend. my nephew is getting baptized so we are going to witness the blessed event:) may the airplane gods smile on us and not get us sick and may Avery not scream her head off on the flight.

STREP THROAT!!!

red and white patches in the throat
difficulty swallowing
tender or swollen glands (lymph nodes) in the neck
red and enlarged tonsils
headache
lower stomach pain
fever
general discomfort, uneasiness, or ill feeling
loss of appetite and nausea
rash

if you have the above listed characteristics and have two children under the age of 2 and 3 months....and are leaving on a trip tomorrow...you are ME! i got strep on sunday night and am just today starting to feel normal again. my throat still KILLS but at least the fever is gone etc. nasty stuff strep and i seem to get it a lot. it must have a special place in it's nasty little heart for our family because the first illness ethan ever got was...you guessed it! STREP THROAT!

pictures of the avery girl...

here are some pictures of avery...love to you all...i hear my "boss" (read: ethan) calling me.

magic couch

apparently we have a magic couch.

my sweet little 5 week old daughter, Avery, loves this couch. She will sleep on this couch when she will not sleep anywhere else.

why is that?

it is a mystery to me why babies seem to like the things that are not for babies. i should send Thomasville a letter telling them that apparently their couches are not just for big people to sit on but tiny babies love them too.

will wonders never cease?

on raising boys...

and maybe girls are the same way but my sister in law-who has two boys- said something to me last night that i totally agree with and thought was pretty profound in a humorous way.

Little boys are like puppies, they need to be let outside at least once a day or they start to chew on the furniture.

mine is like that, is yours? i was just realizing, with the new baby and everything, that we still need to get out and do things so that we all don't feel cooped up like a bunch of chickens.

funny ethan-isms...

Ethan says funny things...

yesterday i was burping Avery and he was sitting beside us, and he says, "Mommy you don't hurt Avery, you be soft!" Apparently he thought i was being too forceful in burping her.

Then he gets out his toy dogs and says, " oh mommy, look, my doggie is so cute! i love him. Don't touch his eyes mommy! what a cute doggie...don't touch his eyes mommy!" we tell him not to touch Avery's eyes and kendall's parents have a dog, whose eyes he cannot touch...so somewhere deep down, he hears what we say to him (smile).

On a more serious note...

Adding a new person to our family hasn't been the easiest thing I've ever done. Let that be my understatement for today. There are some days...like today, where I did not get out of my pajamas until 2, did not get a shower until 3:30 and that was only because Kendall came home early (which is very rare and very nice!). And some days I feel that my head might actually explode if I have to repeat the same phrases I say everyday...one more time. (Allow me to wax philosophical and sentimental for a moment) But, there are times when I see that this is the best thing I have ever done.

I realize that my son doesn't know much more than what I teach him. Frightening as that is, I also recongnize the great potential I have to put positive, loving thoughts and interesting information in his head...and not let him watch T.V. mindlessly. It is amazing to watch him learn, I can literally SEE his mind expanding some days. The connections he makes between things we have read and seen, are great. He applies knowledge and he grows everyday. That is amazing.

I realize that in my little daughter I have a great woman in my home. She is going to be a wonderful person (as is Ethan), and I privileged to be her mother. I hope I always feel this way and let her know that.

I got a forward from a friend today about "invisible women" maybe you've gotten it too. It's a mother who talks about how she can say something to her family and they don't respond...some days she feels like she is just a pair of hands, or a car that needs to pick someone up, or an source of information but not a person. Then she gets a gift of a book about the great cathedrals from a friend, and it changes how she thinks about her life. The great cathedrals were made by people whose names we do not know. Those people built these amazing buildings with the knowledge that they would be mostly anonymous, that many intricate details would be seen only by God. But they built them because they had faith that God does see the work of thier hands and appreciates the sacrifices they've made.

You see the similarities. I am building "cathedrals" and someday, hopefully, people will look at my children and say, "What nice people they are."

Thanks for letting me say that. Some days, it needs to be said and remembered! Good job to all you other mothers, for building your little cathedrals into great people. I appreciate what you do.

The BIG Five

5 things I was doing 10 years ago:
1. Meeting kendall
2. Taking driver's ed (which is funny to those of you who know me because i did not actually get my license until i was in college...i'm not that lame really i just had excellent people to drive me around and didn't want/need one until then)
3. Babysitting
4. Getting ready to go to high school
5. Going to stake dances and actually enjoying them

5 things on my "to-do" list today:
(technically i don't have a "to-do" list because i have a new baby but today was an exception)
1. get dressed
2. take avery to the doctor
3. meet friends at Barro's
4. get diaper wipes
5. make it until 7:15 when i could start getting ethan ready for bed

5 snacks i enjoy:
(i am such a snacker!)
1. popcorn
2. candy
3. chips
4. granola bars
5. fruit

5 songs i know the lyrics to:
1. numerous Disney songs
2. My List: Toby Keith
3. She will be loved: Maroon 5
4. Bigger than my body: John Mayer
5. I could not ask for more: Edwin McCain (happens to be "our song")

5 things i would do if i was a millionarie:
1. pay debts
2. buy houses for my family on the same block
3. help other people go to college
4. buy Kendall the sports car he wants
5. have the best, kick-butt sewing machine they make and know how to use it!

5 bad habits:
1. eating too much
2. not being as tidy as i'd like
3. getting upset too easily
4. perfectionism (i'm working on this one...it's getting better)
5. being impatient

5 things i'd never wear again:
1. those glasses i had in elementary school (large and round)
2. flannel shirts and "no fear" t-shirts
3. most of the Dance Team outfits (hello--body stockings are not very comfortable!)
4. uncomfortable shoes
5. anything that cinches me in and makes it hard to breathe

5 things i like to do:
1. be with my family
2. sew
3. be crafty in general
4. read
5. read blogs and emails (too much, see audrey's addiction reference)

5 favorite toys:
1. digital camera
2. computer
3. sewing machine
4. play-dough (does that count?)
5. my george forman grill

5 people i tag:
1. Audrey
2. Melissa
3. Alacey
4. Annie
5. Tina

TAG YOU'RE IT!

Jackie R., Hottie C. and Erin S.

I'm IT!

I've been tagged....by Audrey...happy reading!

1. Where did you meet your husband?
(this is not a picture of the incident described below...it's just an "Early" Kendall and Jen pic)
August 9, 1997, at a Stake Dance in Lakewood, WA when I was 15 years old and he was 16. He had just returned from being at EFY with all my friends (I did not go that year), and as all my friends were girls he was one of the only guys with our group that night. They introduced him to me, and we danced a couple of times. We had a very funny conversation, which is one of the first things I think of when I remember that night. I thought of him afterwards as that really funny guy who danced with me more than once (because that was a rarity). That night, incidentally, I also met his sister, Katie, who now lives in AZ and is, of course, one of my great friends. As another side note: Kendall had his eye on another of the girls in our circle of friends at that time, and they went out for a little while.

2. What was the first thing you said to your husband?

It was probably something like, “Hi, Kendall, my name is Jen.” And that was the beginning of a beautiful thing.

3. Where was your first date?
(this is the actual Applebee's in Puyallup)
Our first date was December 27, 1998; we went to Applebee’s in our hometown of Puyallup, WA. There he asked me to go to the Jr. Prom. Which took me a minute to process because we were class officers (Kendall: president, Jen: secretary) and we had been planning the prom ad nauseam by that time and I hadn’t even thought of actually going to it. So he said, “What are you doing on January 14th?” or whatever day the prom was and I said, “Nothing, (small chuckle) I don’t usually plan my time that far in advance” and then he looked at me a little sideways and said something to the effect that that was when junior prom was, didn’t I remember that? And I felt very sheepish and said I wasn’t doing anything special and he asked if I’d like to go with himJ so that was our first date at Applebee’s.

4. Where was your first kiss?

After the above stated Jr. Prom, on the doorstep of my parent’s house.

5. Did you have a short or long engagement?

By whose standards is what we have to ask ourselves here? By those people who wait a year or two to get married, then it was short. By those people who meet each other and then two weeks later are married, it was quite longJ we got engaged 11 days after Kendall got home from his mission (that was in September) and we got married on December 27, 2002.

6. Where did you get engaged?

(Engagement Pic)

We got engaged on the grassy lawn across from the Provo, Utah Temple. Down on one knee, the whole sha-bang. It was very romantic and sweet. We’d taken a walk to get there because we lived very close, and it was nice weather outside.

7. Where were you married?

We got married in the Seattle Washington Temple, on December 27, 2002, during a wind storm. The light flickered while we were in the Temple…a sign? Only the good kindJ

8. How did the reception go?

Beautifully, my parents and Kendall’s family and all the people who helped with it should get a medal. It was not an easy thing, my dad did a faux ceiling in the gym, the decorations were beautiful, the food was awesome and I selected all the music, so that was quite good as well. We had a line for a little while at the beginning and then we dispersed and greeted guests as we walked around. While we were in high school, Kendall had made me a story of how we met etc. with pictures and for our wedding we had a slide show of pictures and then Kendall read the story he’d written for me, on the slide show while funny pictures of us passed by. It was very sweet, I cried…for heaven’s sakes!

9. How was the honeymoon?

Quite an impertinent question, but it was lovely. We stayed in a very nice hotel the first night and then went to a cabin that Kendall’s grandparents owned at the time, which was located on Harstene Island, a couple of hours away from our families.

Pictures of the Kiddies...

Here are some pictures of our kids from labor day! hope you all well!

another thought about the wipes...

if they are good for uses other than cleaning poop off little bums, what does that say about what is actually in the wipes? no wonder some kids get diaper rash for no good reason...something to think about....

miracle baby wipes...

Has anyone else besides my sister and me noticed the extraordinary powers of baby wipes? My sister Erin asked me one time about a year ago now, if I had noticed that wipes are amazing and I replied with something witty like, "well, no I haven't" and she said that she has been very successful cleaning lots of things off of clothes and other fabric surfaces with wipes. Let me illustrate a few instance in which I have used baby wipes to great avail.

1. Obviously, they work when changing diapers.
2. Ethan got a little bit of blood on his shorts one day (he's a boy, not too uncommon:)) and I used a wipe and it came almost all the way out with the wipe and then came all the way out in the wash.
3. Yesterday, Ethan happened to draw on my futon cover with a brown crayon...and a wipe was utilized...completely gone!

Those are just a few of the uses I have put them to. It is quite amazing. And we are not talking, only Huggies or Pampers wipes work this way...I get the huge box of the Costco brand and they are great too. I'm not sure what they put in those things but try it...it works. You may never buy another "Shout" wipe or Tide-To-Go Pen again. Really, try it.