March...

I am convinced that I have the cutest kids on the planet. I may (or may not) be a little biased. :) How can Taylor turn EVERYTHING she does into something cute?

Eating popcorn for example...

She loves the stuff and we love her! She now has two words in her vocabulary: Dada & Uh-Oh. I love hearing her say both of them. She always grabs my phone and puts it to her ear and says Dada dada dada over and over again! :) And whenever she trows or drops something she says Uh-oh. I think I could listen to her say Uh-oh forever, it is so cute! :)

Take TC Two-face for example.

Who is TC Two-face you ask? He is the newest member of our family. On Sunday after church after getting dressed into our lounge clothes for the rest of the day(and after the daily discussion of weather or not it's warm enough for Tucker to wear a tank top or not) Tucker decided he was a rock star and needed a rock star name. It was like the heavens opened and I looked down upon the back of the box of Resses Puff cereal in front of me and it said, I kid you not: 'How to figure out your DJ name' (or rock star, in our case) And it said: 'First take the name of your favorite super hero villain; Then put the first letter of your middle name in front of it.' I asked Tucker who is favorite villain was and he first said Joker, so we tried out C Joker and it just didn't have the right ring to it. So I suggested we added his middle AND first name initials. TC Joker. Getting better. Then he decided he wanted a different villain. I told him all the villains I could think of and he chose Two-face. So, TC Two-face was born and all day Sunday graced us with his presence. :)

And here he is in all his glory:

Mean (eh...Ugly) bowling faces, yeah...we got 'em! Who knew Tucker was such a rock star bowler, he got 63 points. I think that is about what I get when I bowl! :)

St. Patricks day came and you can be sure we were NOT getting pinched! Green pancakes and green milk for breakfast. (although you can't tell in this picture!)

Here is a better picture of our green food! :)

And a fabulous lunch with friends to celebrate the impending arrival of baby girl Mortensen! :) My good friend is due to have her last baby on April 7th! :) I love that we are all wearing green! :)

Oh, and if your computer screen looks like this, it looks like you're in the market for a new laptop! I dropped our net book and completely shattered the screen! I am SO mad at myself! I always try and balance too many things in my hand at once. This time the net book got it! In related news though, I am a better mother for not always being tempted by this thing sitting right at my kitchen table. :) We actually went on a walk today and took advantage of this gorgeous weather we have been having!

Hope you are all enjoying this beautiful weather outside like we are! :) yipeee for spring!

da Lakers...

We thought that we were the only people in Spokane who liked the Lakers. I say we, but I guess I should say Ben. The rest of us are Lakers fans just by default! :) But some of our good friends are actually from the LA area and love the Lakers just as much as Ben does! So the Lakers games have just been good excuses for us to get together for yummy food!

I couldn't resist when I saw this tee-shirt at Old Navy! Now Ben has his very own Lakers girl!

Looks like Taylor inherited my love of dogs! :)

Raptor Reef...

We went to Raptor Reef a few weeks ago to try and get out of this cold cold weather! It is a little indoor water park with a wave pool, a little kiddie area and a few big slides. Taylor was too small for me to even take her in the wave pool, so we were confined to the kiddie area, although she didn't like that much either because of the spraying water, but we still had fun! :) My kids just take a while to warm up to water. I know that I've ruined them. Any future children that I have I am going to start dunking them and showering with them from infancy! :) I was afraid that the other people there might call us in for child abuse the way we were forcing them into the water at first! :) Of course, once they warmed up to it, they had a blast! Tucker was just barely tall enough to go down the big slides with an adult! So he even went down a few times with Ben. He ALWAYS had a scared to death look on his face as he reached the bottom of the slides, but once off the slide, he would talk about how fun and cool it was and always wanted to go again! :) And him and I had a lot of fun in the wave pool. We would hop on an inter-tube and ride the waves! It was a perfect mid-winter break for our family! :)

Nathan & Carter came with us too and somehow, the only picture I have of Carter is this one of him falling! :) Carter LOVED the water! He is in Hawaii this week with his mom & dad, and I'm sure he's enjoying those Hawaii waves! :)

Tucker & Ben going down one of the kiddie slides...

My dad came just to hang out and be with the kids and he ended up holding Taylor most of the time. :) I gave him a bottle of water to let Taylor drink from and I came back and he was squirting it in her mouth like she was an animal! :) It was pretty funny!

That Papa, thought he was pretty funny! :)

Oh, and here is a cute one of Carter & Papa. Papa likes to rub his beard on the babies and make them cringe! :) At the end of the day when we were all getting dressed back into our clothes, all the boys were in the dressing room and Nathan thought that Ben had Carter, and Ben thought that Carter was with Nathan and somehow Carter totally escaped the mens bathroom, fully clothed and bee-lined it straight for the water. He ran right in as far as he could go and then fell, fully clothed, back into the water! :) I don't think that Nathan & Angie will ever let Ben live that one down! :)

Taters had a model shoot. I think that she would have liked it more if water hadn't been so cold. I was surprised it was so cold for this time of year. She definitely warmed up to it faster than Tucker did, but after just 20 minutes or so, her feet were literally blue and she was shivering! Thats why she sat with Papa, all wrapped up in her towel most of the time. She did love to watch all the exciting things going on, though.

And even made a few new boyfriends...

It's so much fun to have family close to play with! I can't wait until we can take these water park adventures outside! :)

gifts from grandma...

My mom is known for spoiling her grandkids and it was no different with Taylor for her birthday. Even though she had already gotten Taylor some gifts, she sent her another one from Milwaukee (where she had been with my sister) that came a few days after Taylor's birthday.

Taters got her first I-pod. A princess one-let the princess toys begin. :)

{On a side note, I think this generation of kids are going to grow up thinking that everything has an I in front of it. Tucker thinks Diet Pepsi is called I-Pepsi. He calls Ben's contacts I-Pods; and I hear him putting I's in front of random things all the time! And now my one year old has an 'I-Pod'. :) }

And of course, Tucker got a little something special. :) He got a pair of flip flops.

(I love his facial expressions-he was so excited!)

And a new book! A Tucker book!

Tucker always sneaks kisses from Taylor. :) I love that they love each other. Her face always lights up when she sees him and he is always trying to make her laugh and smile.

But, of course, the best part of the package was the bubbles. These are what Tucker played with for hours! :)

Nothing like getting an unexpected surprise from Grandma to brighten our day! :)

Thanks Grandma!

Tucker is such a sweet boy, right after opening the gifts, he said to me, 'I know...We should call grandma and thank her for our new presents!' He is always so grateful, even with Ben and I.

My helper...

and my UN-helper...

I swear I spend all day just cleaning up after her! :) AND she's had RSV this week which means we've spent a lot of time at home. By the end of the week I was running around in circles, between the breathing treatments, antibiotics, steam showers and her not sleeping! Me being sick is one thing, but it breaks your heart to have your baby sick! :(

Anyway...Tucker on the other hand is going through a phase where he wants to help me with everything and do everything on his own.

these days...

Tucker seems to be in Superhero land. All.of.the.time.

This girl seems to be at my feet. All.of.the.time. She's my little shadow. I love it, most of the time! :) Tucker was NEVER a mama's boy, he was so independent and happy with anyone that I'm not used to a child who wants me to hold her all of the time! I just can't resist that cute little face! :)

This boy has discovered the computer. Does it really start so young? We've entered a whole new world of parenting, here.

This boy just keeps growing like crazy! These were his Christmas jammies, that fit him in December. The top is all of the sudden showing his midriff. Totally immodest!

At his last Dr. appointment, he was 42 inches tall and 42 pounds!

And I just had to include this one that was taken right after the above picture. So Tucker right now! My silly boy!

This girl is always trying to feed me. Can I blame my weight gain on her?

These two love their baths together. Tucker loves splashing...

And Taylor loves yelling.

So it works out pretty well for the two of them. I have no doubt in my mind that once Taylor is able to hold her own against her brother, that she will give him a run for his money. He loves her so much, but pesters her SO much. It will be interesting to see how things go with them once she is a bit bigger. Will our sweet Tucker be able to hand the wrath and angst that Taylor has built up inside of her? :)

Tucker brought this to me the other day, it's Lightening McQueen, the Dog. I was pretty impressed!

I meant to post this with my list of goals for myself for the year. But forgot about it. (surprise, surprise!) And I'm totally embarrassed to be putting this on here, but here is a shot of what my 'food storage' looks like right now. If you can even call it that.

Some water, some spices and about 4 boxes of food from the cannery. I think I have some flour, sugar, dried onions, potato pearls and black beans. If anything were to ever happen to us, we would NOT be eating very well! I've just had it in the back of my head for months now that I need to start working on this. That is another goal of mine for this year. A good friend just taught me a couponing class, and I would slowly love to start getting into that. It's not even about the saving so much money part, although that is awesome, but its the building up food storage part that totally has me wanting to do it. I am so jealous that she can cook from her food storage, and would love to get to that point at our home. It's a little overwhelming, but I'm going to start out small. I will post another picture of my food storage at the end of the year so we can see the progress! :)

And that pretty much sums up what we have been up to lately! Oh, and we were totally late for church today because we forgot about day light savings! How did we forget about that, seriously!? Isn't it like usually posted about or talked about everywhere! :) It was 8:45 and we were feeling pretty good about ourselves being on time for church and Ben looked at his phone and realized it was actually9:45! We got to church and the foyer was filled with the late comers! :)

Bi-Polar March...

March is supposed to come in like a lion and out like a lamb. But up here in Spokane, March seems to be a little bi-polar. Lion one day, lamb the next! On the day that I took both kids in for their yearly check up they both got shots. After the shots the Dr. told Tucker he needed to go jump on the trampoline to get his legs to feel better. He took off with that one and insisted. It actually wasn't a horrible day for March, so off we went to jump and get his legs to feel better. :)

Taylor had a great time, too. I think this was her first time on the trampoline. And she always loves doing what her big brother is doing!

Tucker was jumping as I took these pictures, so most of them are blurry.

Then we had to play soccer since we were outside. Tucker loves soccer! He keeps on telling me that he wants to take soccer class. I can't wait to sign him up for soccer tots in the spring. I wish that my brother or sister were still coaching there, he would love to be able to take a class from one of them! :)

But boy, what a difference a day makes! I thought that the groundhog like saw his shadow or something so that spring was on it's way.

But this was the VERY next day!

{Taylor all bundled up ready to go!}

Tucker found the car brush in the garage and had to help me brush off the snow around the house.

The trampoline first...

Then, of course, the soccer net...

The drive-way...

and the car...

I can't wait for the snow to go away! Please spring, hurry up and get here. :)