Keyton Turns Two...

My LITTLE brothers LITTLE boy, Keyton, turned two last week! We went down to Quincy, WA for the celebration! By we, I mean my friend Sadie and I. Doug and Sadie were here visiting and I couldn't miss Keytons birthday party; (Tucker wanted to go SO bad) so Sadie was kind enough to come with me. (what a good friend I have!) :) We hopped in the car with my parents and away we went for the day. Anyway, Doug and Ben had no problems with us leaving them for the day. We found them in the exact same spots in the living room as when we left. Still in their pajamas, X-box controllers in hand.

By far the prized possessions of the day were the Thomas the Tank Engine balloons that I brought him. He would have been happy with just those all day.

Tucker and Keyton are always happy to see each other:

Helping Kelli get ready for the guests:

Grandma loves her some Keyton:

Kelli, Sadie and I:

Decorating cookies is such a serious thing:

Cookie faces:

Eating the frosting first, of course:

Keyton wasn't exactly sure what to do with the candle, but luckily he had Tucker and his daddy to help him out! He just kind of smiled like this, enjoying the attention! :)

Keyton got the coolest Thomas the Tank Engine set from Grandma & Grandpa, and the boys were Thomas heaven!

If we didn't have to hurry home to our husbands who missed us dearly, we would have stayed and played longer! We wish Keyton was closer to play with more! Its so much fun having a cousin that is so close in age as Tucker!

Happy Birthday Keyton!

Old friends, Crafty things and such...

I'm going to start doing a Sunday Summary, so all that I miss throughout the week I will get to on Sunday. For posterity's sake! :) This week I have some things that are from the past 2-3 weeks, so hopefully from here on out, I won't have such mammoth posts! We'll see! :) I'm more of a picture person, so my documenting consists of a lot of pictures.

Here goes...

I've wanted to stay in a lot this past week. Just tired and in the winter lull...you know, after the holidays, its cold and wet outside, you just want to stay cozy and warm inside.

We have been doing a lot of hanging out at home:

Still playing with a lot of our fun toys from Christmas:

Tucker can't wait for it to warm up to take this baby outside! :)

I've had some old friends come in to town.

Emily was here for Christmas, her sisters threw a baby shower for her. It was fun seeing her and catching up! And Joette was there and it is always wonderful to see Joette! :)

Jessy came in to town this week. I always love having Jessy here and now its even more of a bonus because she brings that cute little Will of hers! :) Tucker and I love us some baby Will! :)We got together at her parents house with some old friends. My friend Gen also just had a little baby, Wyatt, 6 weeks ago! He's so adorable-I couldn't believe how good of a baby he was! Good thing that I have such great friends who are great mothers to teach me how to do things! :) We're just a bunch of tired, worn-out mama's now! :) (you certainly can't tell in this lovely picture, though!--that was sarcastic!!) :)

We were at the Enloe's watching American Idol this week and I think that Carter is becoming a bad influence on Tucker. He is a monkey man, he climbs on EVERYTHING! I think its adorable! :)

Next think I knew, Tucker was up on the counter with him and they were throwing magnets on the ground! We found them like this during one of our commercial breaks! :) Too Cute!

Olivia was getting into the American Idol spirit and put on a little show for us! Here she is rocking out...

And taking a bow...

And just trying to woo us judges in this one...

I've also been getting really crafty these days! I love being crafty and making and creating things. I'm not good at like coming up with my own unique things, but when I see things that I like, I can usually re-create them pretty easily! I made all of these necklace, bracelet and earring sets for my sister-in-laws on Ben's side of the family. I thought that they turned out pretty cute!

Doug and Sadie came into town from Seattle this weekend. Sadie is an awesome knitter and makes the cutest baby hats and mittens. She is going to be in a trade show next weekend in Seattle. We worked hard all weekend to get her prepared! We made a cute tablecloth for her booth and some cute vases to put on it! I think that they turned out great, if I do say so myself! We also made her some awesome fliers and business cards! We were working women!!!

Doug and Tucker both love their puffy vests, and Tucker was so excited to match Doug this weekend! :)

And of course, Tucker was following Buddy around and abusing him all weekend. He still hasn't learned the difference between loving on him and abusing him! Poor Buddy is probably very happy to be home and Tucker free! :) Here he is saying goodnight to Buddy!

Another side note about this week is the fact that our ward boundaries changed! A LOT (as in most all) of our good friends are out of our ward! We were excited for the changes at first, but it really hit us today as we went to church and felt kind of lonely with all of these new faces! I love change and welcome it and embrace it, so I'm not devastated. It's not like any of our friends moved, we still live the same distance away, we can still be friends. We have just been so used to sitting with our friends at church and being with them all of the time, going to activities, and meetings-it just won't be the same without them! I guess it's time to turn a new leaf (is that the phrase?) and get out of our comfort zone and meet some new people! Although, I'm sure our new friends could NEVER be as cool as our old friends!!! :)

Happy New Year!!!

OK, so maybe I'm a little late in posting this, but I'm still trying to get caught up and after this I have absolutely nothing blog worthy because I have been doing absolutely nothing!!! :) We had a great New Year! We went to Seattle on New Years Eve to drop off Ben's parents at the airport. Ben actually surprised me, I didn't know WE were going. I thought he was going to just head over by himself to drop them off on New Years Eve and then would be back the same night. I was excited to not only be able to be with Ben on New Years Eve, but also be in Seattle with our friends! Tucker stayed in Spokane with his grandma!

Cheesecake Factory for Dinner-yummy!!!

So I was ready for bed after dinner at the CF. But the night was still young and I was roped into going to a bar with some of Doug and Sadie's friends that was near the Space needle so we could watch the fireworks at midnight. You know me, I'm a real party animal like that, and can't say no to a night out at the bar!! I haven't been to a bar in years!!!! :) It was worth the wait in a crowded and smelly bar because our view was perfect and the fireworks were pretty cool! I kept thinking to myself the whole time--what am I doing here? I'm Mormon, I'm almost 30 and I'm a mom-and I'm partying like its 1999???!!! It actually wasn't as bad as I thought and we had fun!! :)

I took these pictures and I thought that they turned out pretty cool...

The next morning we were planning on heading back to Spokane but found out that the pass/freeways were closed due to an avalanche. I was missing Tucker and was wanting to get home,but it was also nice to have an extra day to hang out with Doug and Sadie when both of them didn't have to work. We stayed in our pj's most of the day, played games, ate lots of junk, us girls watched some re-runs of 'the real housewives of OC', the boys got some good Xbox playing time in, Sadie taught me how to knit, and we just had a nice relaxing day. The boys even got to do a quite a bit of this while we were there:

The pass finally opened on Saturday and we were able to drive home. I was so excited to get home to Tucker that we didn't make any stops along the way! (we will see each other soon, Darci!!!) :) Because they had been working for like 48 hours on the roads by this point, the roads were great and we made it home fairly easy!

I had to take some pictures on our way home:

Tucker was SO excited to see us when we got home!!! :)

OK, that's not true, I think that he would pick to live with either one of grandma's or grandpa's any day over us! Sad, but true! That boy is so spoiled, and people kept on showering him with gifts, that he was still opening presents well into the new year! (OK, two days into the new year, but you get the idea!)

We LOVE having visitors but we came home to a house that was a mess. Our poor tree was as dry as a bone so Ben immediately started sawing it down. I love Christmas and having my house decorated for the holidays, but I was also ready to have my house back, so we went to work that day and got everything boxed up and put away! (Yes, Ben is wearing the same clothes because we only packed for one day-and we had literally just gotten home!)

This is what was left of our tree...

2008 was a good year to us! We, of course, have had our ups and downs, but are grateful to know that each day brings us new experiences to help us grow and become better people! 2009 is going to be a great year! I can't wait to see what is in store for our little family! I'm looking forward to many new and exciting things and putting to good use all of the things I've learned in 2008! Another year older and wiser, too!! :)

Happy Birthday Ben!!!

Ben turned 29 on December 28th! I know, I'm a little behind, but I wanted to get this posted before it was WAY TOO late! :) I can't believe that we're getting to be such old farts!!! Seriously! One nice thing about having his birthday so close to Christmas is that we are usually with his family and I know that he loves that! Since his birthday was on a Sunday, we went out to dinner with his parents and my family and our good friends, Jason and Cherie Robisch on Saturday night.

We had a great time...

The two lovebirds, Tucker and Carly had to sit next to each other...

This is such a Jason face, I had to post it! :)

Ben didn't know, but I had gotten him a 46 inch LCD TV for his birthday. Well, it was more like a Christmas, Birthday, Graduation, every holiday for the next year present! It is all he has been talking about since we bought our house. I knew that he would NEVER justify spending the money on himself to get one, so I surprised him. I purposely gave him some really lame Christmas presents (although he didn't even notice) like garments and socks and one DVD and a blender-and that was it- so he would just be a teensey disappointed and it would make this birthday present even better! I had everyone head back to our house for ice-cream after dinner and we just happened to be the last ones there. He walked in to see the TV with a big huge red bow on it. I think he was pretty surprised!

Tucker liked the bow and the box the best...

I thought that this one of Carly just chillin' was so cute...

We have been total white trashin' it for the past few weeks. Our old TV is still in the entertainment center and we just have our new one on top. We plan on selling our old TV (if anyone is interested!) and getting a TV stand for the new one. Hopefully soon! But Ben's just been in hog heaven with this new TV and I'm glad that he loves it, he deserves it!!! Although I don't think that this is going to cut down our TV time like I have been wanting to do! I do have to say that watching movies is pretty cool. So far the most that we have watched are movies and football games, which is why I think that Ben wanted the TV in the first place, so it has served its purpose well!! :) Maybe it will save us money since instead of going out to movies, we can just stay home and watch our really COOL TV! :)