VISITORS!

A few weekends ago we had visitors again, which we love. Uncle Steven, Aunt Marie, Aunt Leslie, and Marie'a Boyfriend Matt all came to stay over their fall break from school. We had a good time going to Red Rocks, Chuck E. Cheese, and the zoo. They were also a big help when I got a call from the Real Estate photographer saying he wanted to take pictures of our house.

There are some great pictures that demonstrate the personalities of our children also. Enjoy!I like these two pictures of Ruby because you can see her little teeth. She has her 4 front teeth, and then two molars on the top. So she is eating almost anything!The first night that everyone was here Ashley came over. Matt made us dinner (what a treat for me) and Leslie and Ashley made Ruby and I a birthday cake since they missed our birthdays only by a few weeks.

This is the crew at Red Rocks. For those of you who haven't made it there with us yet, it is an incredible ampitheater that is built into the rocks. The Beatles, Rolling Stones, and the Fray have all performed there. The Mormon Tabernacle Choir is on the schedule for next summer!

After Red Rocks we had about a half an hour before we needed to meet Noah for dinner. So we made a quick stop at the temple. I love these two pictures because they show my kids personalities. The one above is typical Ruby. She loves her mommy to hold her and give her kisses (definately a girl). Below is Levi, who had run away from his mom to put his hands into the fountain at the temple (which was promptly stopped after the picture) and then placing his handprints on the cement (he is all boy!). I love them both so much!

Following Red Rocks and dinner we had an adventure at Chuck E. Cheese. Marie wanted to take Levi to play games...and he loves Chuck E. Cheese. So we were having a nice time and were down to our last few tokens. Levi decided that he wanted to play ski ball. Last time we were at Chuck E. Cheese Noah taught him how to walk up the ramp and place the ball in the hole that he wanted. So he played ski ball the way his daddy taught him. All of a sudden there were sirens going off. Levi had gotten some magical, high score, and won the jackpot of 250 tickets. Above is Uncle Steve nicely organizing the tickets.

Here is Levi using the ticket counter. He had 349 tickets in all. And of course all he wanted at the ticket counter was a 10 ticker sucker.

The next day was free day at the zoo. It was so fun, and so crowded. I think that my favorite part was the hippos. There was one that was up out of the water and yawned so that we could see its huge mouth. We also got to see it walk back into the water. Too bad I had no camera for them. Ruby LOVED the zoo. She pointed at all the animals and would woof like a dog at them. It was pretty cute! Of course a trip to the zoo wouldn't be complete without dippin' dots.

This is the morning that they had to leave. As you can see in the picture, Ruby is a big morning person. She waked up almost every morning with a smile on her face, and Levi has a hard time waking up.Thanks for coming guys! We had a blast!

Levi's Imaginary "GUYS"

Levi has some imaginary friends. He calls them "The Guys!"

When we lived with Noah's parents the guys were always on the ceiling. We would be eating dinner and he would tell us that the guys were up there. Well when we bought our house the guys must have stayed at grams house.

They used to make apperances every so often at our house, but for the past week or so, they have been a big part of Levi's imaginary play time. Last week when we were out running some errands, we walked in a store and Levi said, "Come on guys, get in the cart." The guys accompanied us on all of our errands that day. Levi was very careful to tell them to buckle their seat belts each time that we got in the car.

Today the guys joined us for lunch. They sat at the counter and ate grapes, because they do not like noodles with peas.

CONGRATULATIONS MEGHAN AND GABE!!

Noah's only sister was married on October 11th!! It was a beautiful and perfect day! The church was beautiful, Meghan looked absoluteley gorgeous. They wrote a little something to say to each other and it was some of the sweetest things that I have ever heard. We are so happy for the two of them and can't wait to go to Nauvoo in a year. Thanks guys for letting us be part of your special day.

It was an especially fun weekend for us because we had some family friends from Utah stay with us. Bill, Bethy, Gage, and Emma came in on Thursday night and stayed until Monday. It was fun to watch Levi and Gage play. Bethy even helped me get rollers into Ruby's hair.

Another memorable time from the wedding was the dancing. I love dancing with Noah. There was a nice swing dancing tempo song on, and somehow neither one of were supervising our children, so I thought we could dance. I followed Noah out onto the dancefloor when suddenly he starts crazy dancing like I have never seen him crazy dance before. I can't describe it, but it was crazy enough that somewhere in the middle of his dance solo his tie was thrown off. Thanks honey for making me laught...extra hard! Needless to say when he started busting a move, I retreated from the dancefloor and laughed with everyone else from the sidelines.

This is Meghan and Ruby at the reception. You can see the beautiful canopy that was draped to cover the cultural hall ceiling. Everything was gorgeous!Meghan with her 5 brothers: Tim, Chris, Josh, Noah, and Nathaniel. Noah and his big brother Chris. Chris still lives in Chicago Heights where Noah grew up, so we don't get to see them very often. Aren't they cute? Levi was a ring bearer at the wedding. He did such a great job. I was a little nervous, because he was kind of a pill during rehersal, but he did absolutely perfect for the big event. His cousin, Isabella was a flower girl and they walked down the isle together. Doesn't he look dashing in his tuxedo? Ruby also got a new dres for the big event!

This is Levi with his cousin Olivia, who lives in Chicago. She is about a year younger than Levi, but they had a blast playing together for the weekend. This is a picture of the two of them sitting at Gram piano and drinking their pop.

Olivia has a brand new baby sister, sofia (congrats Chris and Meghan). Levi had seen pictures of baby sofia from when grams and yampa went to Chicago to visit her when she was born. He was SOOOOOOOOOO excited to see her. He talked about her all day long. Ruby was also in love with her. She would stare at her, and want to touch her.

Ruby's 1st Birthday!!

My sweet little Ruby turned 1, and I can hardly believe it!!!

A funny thing happened when Levi and I took her to her Dr. Appointment. I was trying to get the kids ready to go. When Levi asked where we were going I toldhim we had to take Ruby to the doctor. He responded by telling me that she wasn't sick. So I explained that because Ruby had a birthday, we needed to take her in for a check up. Well, when we got to the doctor, Levi walked up to the receiptionist and told her that Ruby was here for the ketchup! It was hillarious. The doctor's appointment went just fine. Ruby is tall and skinny according to the growth charts...once again, go figure!

We had a very fun polka dot birthday for her to celebrate. Thanks to everyone who made the day special for her, and her mommy. We had a contest to see who would wear the most polka dots, and I had dots candy in a vase for everyone to guess how many there were. Here are pics from the party.

Here is the BIRTHDAY GIRL!!! She got a new polka dot out fit. Grams brought some dot stickers just in case anyone forgot their polka dot attire!And the winner is....May May. She wore the mose polka dots to the party, so she got the polka dot princess crown. Grams and Yampa in their polka dots.

Levi doesn't own any polka dots (neither does his dad) so he decked his leg out in polka dot stickers, which were not pleasant for him to take off later.My polka dot decorations. I thought that they were pretty cool.Happy Birthday to you! Happy Birthday to you! Happy Birthday dear Ruby! Happy Birthday to you!Here is the beginning of the cake eating. She was actually pretty dainty for the whole thing. In this picture she is picking the polka dots off the cake and eating them.Then I cut up the cake, so that she would pick it up. She then crossed her little legs to the side and started eating.

Here is the extent of her messiness, and brother getting in on the action. What a little princess!!

As if our lives couldn't get more exciting!!!

Noah took this picture of the kids at his moms last Sunday. Levi loves to put all the balls in the wagon and pull it around the yard. He also loves to give Ruby rides in the wagon!

Isn't she gorgous!!! I just adore my little princess!!! She is so beautiful and full of life, and getting bigger and smarter all the time, and will be one in less than a week. She hates when I put her hair in pigtails, so I have only been doing that on Sundays lately.

This past Thursday I celebrated my 28th birthday...man am I old! However I am not as old as Noah's brother Josh who turned 30 this year, or as my sister Janette who will turn 30 next year (sorry guys!) It was a pretty normal day. Noah's mom came over and took us to Sonic to get a Cream Slush (yummy yummy!) and then Noah and I had dinner at Chilies and went to a movie. Oh I also made myself some yummy hommade salsa from our garden!

Noah took the day off from work yesterday and on Monday so that we could work on our house. We painted the kitchen (well actually Noah painted it and I played with the children. We also got rid of the vertical blinds and put up some curtains, and a new light fixture and it looks beautiful. We are planning to officially have it on the market in the next few weeks. So if anyone has decided that they miss us too much, and want to move to Colorado, we have an excellent house waiting for you to buy!


I hope that everyone in Utah is enjoying watching General Conference on public TV or listening to it on the radio. We don't get KBYU at our house, and our internet was out this morning so, I watched the veggietales instead of listening to conference. I am quite jealous!

So for the really exciting news. Ruby is going to be a big sister, and Levi is going to be a big brother, again! We are pretty excited about it. It seems like when our lives decide to be exciting that they decide to be really exciting. We will be adding o ur new little baby in May right in the middle of Noah's finals! When we told Levi that we were going to get a new baby he said that he wanted to keep Baby Ruby. So sweet.

The day after I told Noah he sent me a beautiful boquet of Chocolate colvered strawberries...which were soo yummy!

This is the cake we took over to Noah's mom when we told her we were having a baby. I got a little sick last weekend and wouldn't take any medicine (No advil when you are pregnant and no Tylonel when you are nursing). We knew that she thought it was insane that I wouldn't take anything, so we decided that it was time to spill the beans!

Our Exciting Week

We have had quite the exciting week. We have had a lot of stuff going on lately, it seems that our lives are usually that way. But extra busy as of late made for an exciting week. Here are the highlights only!

On Thursday we finally turned in Noah's grad school application. Hooray. It was quite a lot more work that applying for an undergraduate degree. He had to do an application, request 4 letters of recommendation, transcripts, answer a list of questions, write a statement of purpose, and put together a portfolio of his related work and writings. When it was all done it looked so nice. He walked it up to the school which is only 4 blocks from work and handed it in. Whew...big check off of our list.

Then on Sat. we bought a minivan! We have been looking in to buying a car for quite some time, knowing that the cruiser doesn't have enough room for any more passengers than the 4 of us. After looking at our many options we decided that between the fuel economy and the space, that it was a good choice for us. It even has flex fuel, which is better for the environment. Here is a picture of what it looks like-except ours is red. Actual pictures will come soon!

So yesterday Noah installed a new garage door, so that I will actually park our van in the garage. He has become quite handy. It even has a key pad and sensors.

Then, when we got the mail we were pleasantly suprised that Noah recieved his acceptance letter to graduate school!!! That took less than a week!! He will start his Masters of Urban Planning degree on January 20th! He hopes to graduate with a dual Masters in Urban and Regional Planning and Urban Design. Noah going back to school is going to mean a lot of change for our family...again. Noah will be quitting his second job, and we will probably be moving out of our house to make school more affordable. I feel so blessed that Noah works so hard so that I can stay home with Levi and Ruby. He is doing everything that he can so that in the future I can be at home and I love him so much for it. GO CU BUFFALOS!!!

The Prophet Said to Plant a Garden!

"The prophet said to plant a garden so that's what we'll do

For God has given rich brown soil, the rain and sunshine too.
And if we plant the seed just right and tend them carefully,
Before we know good things will grow to feed our family."

"We plant the seeds to fill our needs, then plant a few to spare,
And show we love our neighbors with the harvest that we share.
Oh won't you plant a garden too, and share the many joys
A garden brings in health and love to happy girls and boys. "

(LDS Children's Songbook p237)

We have had a blast with our garden this year. I am sure there will be more pictures before the summer is over. So far we have peas, carrots, cherry tomatoes, basil, mint, and sunflowers. We have tons of big tomatoes that we are waiting to turn red. And we have softball sized watermelon, so hopfully those will grow well also.

ADVENTURES IN POTTY TRAINING!!!!

WOW! The house is so quiet when I am the only one awake! I have a lot that I should be doing, but I thought instead I could update our adventures in potty training....here we go again! This is a warning that this post contains information from the trenches of motherhood, and if you have no interest in potty training, you should move on without reading this. I decided to write this mostly so that when Levi is older, I can embarrass him with it.

Last December Levi was getting upset when he would go #2 in his diaper, so we got him some underwear. That didn't last too long. Then, in March had a serious attempt at it, which was working until mom was sick in bed for a week. Since that time he wears underwear occasionally. We had a pretty busy last few months of company, so I wasn't going to push it on him then, but now that the company is gone, we are potty training for the last time.

Levi's problem is not that he is scared of the toilet. When he sits on the toilet he empties his bladder just fine. The problem is that he is so focused when he is playing he will not leave his toys for the three minutes to use the restroom. So after many failed attempts we have resorted to the sticker chart. Now, you can call it a reward system, but lets face it. I am bribing my child to be potty trained. I tell him I will give him a sticker (2 stickers for #2) and then when his chart fills up he gets a toy. I have also been a really over excited mom when he goes potty in the toilet so that he knows how happy it makes me. After a week, he has earned a new train (Gordon). And we are working on chart #2 that has twice the number of spaces. This is a picture of him at target when he bought his train with his chart. He was too excited to take time to get a good picture.


So he was going #1 on the toilet rather well, but just wasn't attempting the #2's. I was pretty sick of cleaning up the #2 when they fell out of his underwear onto the floor so once I had Levi do all of the dirty work. We go in the bathroom, he takes off his underwear, which spills all the little pebbles onto the floor. Then he empties the rest of the pebbles into the toilet, which gets more pebbles on the floor. Then, he takes toilet paper and picks up all the pebbles he has put on the floor and puts them in the toilet. So he has now learned that Levi puts his own pebbles into the toilet, whether he does it the easy was or the hard way.

As for mom and dad, potty training has given us lessons in sanitation, insanity, patience, patience, patience, and patience. He is doing such a great job and we are so proud of him for being diligent and loving his sticker chart!