Lucy crawling up the stairs..haven't gotten a good video of her walking yet but I am working on it! Now I just need to teach her how to climb down...

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas! The kids saw Santa at our ward christmas party a week ago. I was determined to get a santa picture, much to their dismay. Lucy couldn't stop staring at him and Isak just wanted to get the heck out of there.

Isak "helped" me make sugar cookies this year, he loves to put sprinkles on the cookies. He also loves to smash raw dough onto the cooked cookies and try to push the cookie cutter onto already cooked cookies. But he sure had a lot of fun!

Christmas Eve this year we spent with Kevin's family. Every year they spend Christmas Eve at his grandparents with all of their family, they eat, sing, and open presents. It was fun, except for Isak's major breakdown when some children received nerf guns and I didn't have one for him. I had brought him a present, but plastic dinosaurs just can't compete with a nerf gun. He didn't understand of course, and was crying and saying "I want the gun, I want the gun" It was very sad. So we took him home early with the promise that Santa was bringing him his own gun in the morning.

Isak and Lucy "posed" for a picture. This is as about as good as it gets when it comes to taking a picture of them together.

But Lucy was more than willing to pose for me...

Isak on Christmas morning building a home for his dinosaur with his new blocks. That's Kevin trying to shovel some breakfast in his mouth.

Isak was pretty impressed with the loot he woke up to on Christmas morning. Below is him posing for me on top of presents.

Lucy was also quite excited for all of her presents. She woke up too early and was pretty grumpy during present opening. She spent most it trying to go back to sleep..

In the afternoon we went to my parent's house and had Christmas number two. This is Lucy with a doll that I got for christmas 20 years ago. My mom made her some new clothes and spruced her up a bit. I loved this doll and carried it with me everywhere. Lucy looks pretty excited to have her to play with.

Isak was playing with uncle mark wearing his safety goggles.

Isak thought every present that was opened was his, including all of Lucy's. We got her a play table and he started carrying it around and pushing her down whenever she would get near the thing. Finally we got them to agree for a few brief seconds to play together...Oh and Lucy took her first steps at my mom's house on Christmas! It was only a step but she did it a few more times that day. Very exciting. She's growing really fast, I even braided her hair the other day. Hopefully we should get the keys to our house tomorrow...anyone up for a New Years Eve painting party??

Here's my weekly update...we had our first major snow, lucy ate spaghetti for the first time..and oh wait, yes, we are still waiting to close on our house. We were really hoping to be in before christmas but apparently that's not going to happen. It has been a really frustrating process, when we bought our home in Boise, everything went though like it was suppose to and we got our keys the same day we signed. But this has been a completely different story and I am still not a 100% why we have to wait but oh well. Lucy LOVES spaghetti. Can you tell? Below is a picture of Kevin eating spaghetti as well . I see some resemblance... Spaghetti is really hard to scrub off children. And highchairs. I think she was orange tinged for a few days. Kind of reminds my of an oompa loompa.

Isak also discovered he loves the snow, big suprise I know. It was perfect snow for snowballs and sledding (mom pulling the sled in the snow), although Isak just really liked throwing the snow at stuff. He also loves the color white and kept telling me "the ice is white, the ice is white". Very observant.

Lucy looking at a book, she loves to do this and will often talk to herself like she is reading the words. It is quite adorable.

I worked a few days this past week so Kevin babysat the kids a few times. I'm not sure I can call it babysitting since he's their father and watches them all the time but oh well. I would like to add he always does a great job at keeping them alive and fed. And on that note, this is the outfit Lucy was wearing when I came home from work. Granted it could've been much worse, at least it was clean and the right size. But red and pink?

Isak is constantly climbing on the counter. Its a battle at about 8 times a day I'm telling him to get down and he uses the excuse "I want to help the mom" and "I want the pink food" (strawberry milk). Hopefully at our new house he won't be able to climb onto the counters but I'm doubting anything will stop him. By the way, we close on our house this week and hopefully will be moved in this weekend...after the carpets get cleaned and some painting gets done.

Lucy, also when daddy is watching her, made this impressive mess all over the flor with chocolate cereal. She really loved trying to clean up the spill however, and sat for a long time eating it off the floor. I did sweep it up eventually...

We have been trying to get a christmas picture for a while. Really any picture of the 4 of us feels like a major ordeal to get through. Isak was trying to pick his nose for nose for most of the pictures and of course, no one wanted to sit still. I didn't even try for coordinated outfits or a picturesque setting. I was just happy they were in clean clothes with clean faces and I wasn't covered in spit up cheerios and vomit.

I have fallen horribly behind in my blogging so this is a quick recap of our lives the past 3 weeks. I started my new job at the hospital here in town and so far it is going well. It has also made things very busy and that combined with lots of family visiting and the holidays, I have neglected to update my blog. So, here it goes.Kevin's grandma took us to see Trans-siberian orchestra in Seattle in November. I have never been and it was really fun. We did have to walk in pouring rain there and wait for 20 minutes in the rain but it was very worth it. Lots of fire, lots, and long haired guitar players banging their heads in unison. My parents were kind enough to take our kids for the day so it was the first time we had ever been away from them for that long...together. We got home at about 3 am. It went well so I have decided that we need to leave together more often and do fun things...we'll see how that pans out.

Lucy took a bath in the sink and was incredibly excited about it. I am pretty sure she soaked the entire kitchen counter and floor.

For Thanksgiving, Kevin's brother and his wife came to visit with their little boy Conner. He and Lucy were born 10 days apart so they had lots of fun crawling all over each other and chasing the kitties. Lucy is probably a little more aggressive since she is used to defending herself against Isak all the time and I'm not sure how Conner felt about her beating up on him...

As part of Thanksgiving weekend, we had a Boise state party and had a bunch more family over. Boise, of course, won the game but it was exciting nonetheless.

Lucy and Conner during the Boise game. Apparently Lucy had stripped off her clothes and Conner was appropriately dressed in orange. Here she is with a stuffed "bronco".
Lucy eating her first thanksgiving dinner. My brother came down from Texas and we had Thanksgivng on Saturday with him at my parents. We discovered that Lucy loves sweet potatoes and cranberry sauce but does not care for pumpkin pie. A girl after my own heart...

I tried really hard to pose Isak for pictures but he wasn't too interested. Here is him and Conner before church on Sunday. They coordinated so I decided it was picture worthy.We just returned yesterday from our trip to Rexburg for Kevin's sister's baby blessing. Her little girl was born in October and is very cute. It was fun to see everyone but it was a loooong trip with 2 little kids...we got there on Friday and left on Sunday. I think next time we decide to travel that much we're going to try to stay a little longer.

This morning Isak was insistent that he have the "bubble gun", aka...the ginormous bubble blower my sister bought him for his b-day this past year. I keep losing batteries for it and he really makes quite a mess inside with it so I try to hide it...obviously unsucessfully. So he settled instead for me blowing bubbles and "fighting" them with a fork. He kept saying, "poke the bubbles, fight the bubbles" over and over again, while battling them with the fork. Lucy watched in amazement...

My dad's b-day was this past Friday and Lucy wore her party dress for the occasion. We had lots of fun and had some decilious chocolate cake.

For all those who are interested, here is a video of Lucy crawling and talking with her mouth closed, one of her favorite activities, and just plain being crazy.
Lucy went in for her 9 month appt yesterday...she's 30 inches tall (just over 95%), 19lbs 30z, and her head is in the 90%. What can I say...we grow 'em big.

Lucy turned 9 months yesterday, she has 6 teeth although most of the time chooses to smile and talk with her mouth closed so we never get to see all of them. Although , I can assure you that they are definitely still there. I took this picture of her upside down in an attempt to show all of her teeth. I think Isak was getting his first tooth at this age so the fact that she already has 6 is amazing to me. She is crawling everywhere and loves to follow Isak around and try to do whatever he is doing. Isak is not a big fan of this and still refuses to call her by her name, instead referring to her as "baby" or calling her the cats names, "kiki" or "Sam". I'm hoping this changes before they get into school together.

Kevin and Isak playing on the tire in the backyard. Kevin apparently really wants this tire someday in our backyard, and since it looks like we won't be living far away, perhaps we can just roll it down the road.

Yes, the little stinker has started pulling herself up on Everything she can get her hands on. Lucky for me she doesn't have much balance yet so I don't think she will walk anytime soon but I can't believe she's already big enough to be doing this! I just found out my WA nurse's license was activated so I will probably start working soon as well which I am looking forward to.

As for everything else, we are trying to get a house here in Othello that was under foreclosure and is a pretty good deal. All we have left is the inspection this week so hopefully all will go well. It needs some work...well, a lot of work...it will give us plenty of weekend projects for the next 5 years. But its in a nice neighborhood across from the park (and the pool) so it should be fine. Hopefully everything goes through like its suppose to!

Halloween

This year halloween was pretty low-key...our costumes were packed away and I realized my kids were too little to know what the heck was going on. So I decided it would be a waste of time to put a ton of work into their costumes. I made them super heroes, complete with capes, shorts, boots and identifying letters. It worked. They refused to sit still for any pictures and Isak had to be bribed. Lucy is getting really wiggly now that she can crawl and lunges for everything she wants, Isak is starting to get annoyed I think. Anyway, we took them to the trunk or treat and Isak had fun getting candy although I think all the costumes and people kind of scared him.

Isak liked people dropping candy in his bucked but didn't really get why he couldn't eat it right away. He had a meltdown (s) before bedtime and I'm guessing it was all the sugar.

Here he is nicely posing for one picture, he ripped of his cape (darn velcro), but you gotta love the optimus prime boots.

So I just wanted a few decent pictures of the kids together in their costumes. This didn't happen. Shortly after this was taken, Isak got in trouble and it was discovered he had pooped up his shirt and lucy almost flipped off the couch (I caught her).

Lucy started officially crawling this past week, she still likes to "sit spin" as we call it but she moves around pretty well and is now actually moving up on all fours.

I think she looks a little like Alice in Wonderland in this dress. Isn't she cute?

Isak and Lucy watching some TV together with grandpa (who was cut out of the pic, sorry Bob).

Isak has found a tree to climb in the backyard. We officially now have renters in our house, we just need to find a place here in Othello that is available. So far we have come up with nothing but we haven't been looking for very long, hopefully something hospitable will pop up soon. Meanwhile I've decided to channel my domesticity (is that a word?) into fixing up my in-laws basement. We've already made some great progress and I have a great motivator in that I'm living that right now.

Fall Time

I took the kids to the park today (again) and Lucy sat in one of the swings, she is getting so big! I think this confuses Isak, he always looks at her strangely and will sometime say, "baby, out".

She loved it though and really likes watching Isak swing as well and will always laugh at him.

I took the kids to the pumpkin patch today with some ladies from church and their kids. It turns out there are lots of crazy little boys Isak's age with a similar energy level and they had lots of fun chasing each other and jumping off hay bales. Isak also insisted I carry him as well as Lucy which was rather difficult, I could only do it for a little while. They are over 50 lbs together and that's a lot to carry!

This child really has no fear. These hay bales were about 6 high and he would look at me and go, "big jump? big jump?" and then jump towards me and hope I would catch him. I'm already getting gray hair.