Little Rock

I had to go to a conference in Little Rock last week, so my mom and Annie came along. We didn't get to see much of the city since I was in meetings most of the time, but we had a great time anyway. Annie was an angel the entire time, even when our flight was canceled in Denver and we had to wait six hours for the next one (many of the other travelers were not so angelic about that).



The biggest adventure of the trip were the six tornadoes that touched down in Little Rock while we were there. We knew there was a huge storm going on, but didn't actually realize there were tornadoes until the next morning when people started calling to check on us after hearing reports about them on the news. We had heard the tornado sirens the night before, but just figured there was a really bad accident. Apparently, that was our cue to take cover. I guess the sirens don't really help us mountain folk!

Annie Rose

annie banannie. bananners. banans.


roo. rooey. rooey patooey. patoons. petunia.


ruby. ruby lynn. ruby sue. sue. sister sue. sis. sissy. sweets.
Whatever we call you, we love you lots!

Discovery Gateway

For my Grandma's birthday, some of my cousins and I went to Discovery Gateway. It was definitely worth the cost of admission. Cole loved it and we will be going back. We didn't have time to get through everything. I think Cole would have spent the entire time at the first exhibit if I hadn't hurried him along.


This is a shot of me and my sisters - Kelli and Karlee.






After we were finished, we went to my Grandma's and had a spaghetti dinner and Easter egg hunt. It was fun to get together with my cousins and celebrate together.

Easter Fun

Easter lasted for quite a few days at our house this year. On Friday, we had Cole's friends from primary come to our house for an egg hunt. Last year when we had an Easter egg hunt at our house, we had already mowed the grass and had flowers blooming. This year we still had piles of snow, but the kids had a great time. It was fun - there were some older kids (6&7) who were scoping out the eggs and planning strategy, a bunch of preschoolers who just ran around like crazy, and a couple of toddlers who pretty much found one piece of candy and stopped searching so they could eat it.

Saturday was super fun - we spent the day with my grandma and some of my cousins in SLC. We went to Discovery Gateway and then had an egg hunt at my grandma's.



On Sunday, we headed up to Cache Valley to visit our families after church. First to the Griffiths where we had another egg hunt.




Then, we met my family to roll Easter eggs. Floyd thinks this is an odd tradition that my kooky family came up with on our own, but I promise other people do it too. If you don't believe me, go visit Old Main Hill. The seagulls gather there a few days before Easter just waiting for all the remains and then camp out for the next week or so eating them up (seriously, they do - I spent eight years trudging up that hill and saw them myself). As a kid, I LOVED this tradition. I would spent hours agonizing over which order I would throw my eggs in (the prettiest was always last). It certainly beats eating all those colored eggs and what else would you do with them?? Cole, of course, loved it. Usually we roll them in one of my dad's fields, but this year we went to a nearby gravel pit since the fields are still quite snowy. After we rolled the eggs, the kids had a great time sorting through the trash at the pit. Josh, my nephew, even found a couple of bullet-riddled army men. It was the find of a lifetime for him. They also found some other, less take-homeable objects (e.g., beer bottles, bullet casings, etc). It was lots of fun and yesterday Cole asked me when it would be Easter again, so I guess he enjoyed it too.




You can't see the kids very good in this last picture, but I added it in so you can see how much snow Cache Valley still has and see the huge mountain of rocks our little boys are trudging up. I didn't think Cole would make it, but he did.

disney fun

We went to Disney on Ice last night with my family. Cole, of course, had a great time. He didn't seem to notice that the theme was "Princess Wishes" - every princess has a prince after all. Plus, there were pirates, a dragon, and even a few swords. Thanks for the fun night Grandma and Grandpa!


Cole on trax - one of his favorite parts

Enjoying the show with Andra and Cindy (my aunt and cousin)


Daddy and Annie were really excited for the show...


...but didn't last too long!


Cole and Josh showing off their Flounder hats


Cole liked his hat so much, he wore it pretty much all day today - he even has it on in his bed.

random musings on being a mom...

My husband is out of town and I don't have anyone to share the funny little daily happenings of my life. So you all get to read about it instead.

Kids are just so fun. My sister went on a date with a guy the other night who told her he didn't like kids. She's not so interested in going on a second date. What kind of a sick person doesn't like kids? They are so great. I just got finished reading scriptures with Cole. This is one of my favorite activities. We have this old, illustrated set of the Book of Mormon. It's great for a kid, lots of detail to the pictures. He's way into it. He has a turn to "read" every night. We are somewhere in 2nd Nephi and his turn tonight consisted of "the words of Ishmael will bring great blessings and that's all." I love it. Floyd and I sit and smile every night when he takes his turn. We've heard something about Ishmael for the past five nights at least. I think he has Ishmael and Isaiah mixed up, but who really gets Isaiah anyway? He gave a talk in church yesterday. I had made little picture cue cards for him and got up with him to help prompt him. He stood up and whizzed through it with no help from me or the cards. At one point, I tried to insert a word for him and he just looked at me and said, "no" and continued on his way. I guess that means he just doesn't need me anymore. I realized last week that I have been demoted. We were playing dinosaurs. Usually when we play, I get to be Ducky's mom while he is Ducky or Little Foot or Petri (Annie is always Spike since Spike doesn't talk). He had been at my mom's house and when we are there, I basically don't exist and he just clings to her. She got to be Ducky's mom while we were there. When we came home, I had to pretend to be Grandma Rose so that I could pretend to be Ducky's mom.

Little Annie is not so little anymore. She has been army crawling for about two months and learned how to really crawl last week. The trouble is she also learned how to walk holding on to my hands and LOVES it. Every time you try to sit her down, she stiffens her little legs and refuses. She wants you to walk with her everywhere. Her favorite place to walk - the garbage. She loves garbage cans and if you leave her in a room alone, she will have it dumped on the floor within ten seconds. She found one in the primary room yesterday at church - luckily that was empty.

Oh my sweet babies. They are growing SO fast. I really do love being a mom - most days. Today was...um...mostly one of those days. Floyd is gone for the week, so of course Cole is sick - 103 degree fever and runny nose (I swear the kid gets a fever if he has a toenail snag). He even took a nap today, making a grand total of three naps in the past year. So now, it's 10:00 at night, he's feeling much better, he's been out of his room for "one more kiss" ten times, and will not be going to sleep anytime soon. His sister, meanwhile, used to be a good sleeper. Somehow I have ruined her just as I ruined him. It now requires a 3-ring-circus to get the girl to sleep. I've been in school for lots of years and had lots of child development classes, but I'm completely clueless about how to get kids to sleep. In my opinion, Dr. Ferber is a joke (hello, they are babies, not rats), Babywise probably works for some kids, I think mine have a bit too much "personality" for it ( also, I read the book and found several lies about child development and misrepresentations of data so even though I agreed with some of their ideas, I have a bad taste about it), so we do a lot of rocking and singing in our house. It's not so bad really. I like to rock her to sleep, even when it's 3:00 in the morning I don't mind it so much. And I'm pretty sure being rocked to sleep doesn't do any long term damage to the child. Figuring out how to go to sleep on your own really can wait until you are older than 1 (I promise, Cole did and children in many countries all over the world do it). She also likes white noise, but the trouble is that once she gets used to it, we have to switch sources of white noise and I've already tried the radio, the vacuum, the blowdryer, and a fan. She gets used to white noise really fast, which, although it is frustrating, secretly makes me happy. The best indication of later intelligence for an infant is how quickly they habituate (get used to new things and lose interest in them). So, even though I have bad sleepers, they are smart and adorable and we'll make it through!

Party Time

My nephew, Landon, turned 1 this week. Hurray for birthdays! We had a great time watching his brother, sister, and Cole open his presents. They were definitely more into the party than he was. Landon's a cute little guy, but he sure scared everyone making his grand entrance a year ago. It was a blizzard and my sister's contractions were about 5 min apart. She called the hospital, but they said don't come yet. She left anyway and apparently nobody told Landon he wasn't ready yet - he was born in the car in the hospital parking lot. We were so grateful they were both okay. Happy birthday, Landon, we're glad to have you in the family.

Umm - I think Landon's helping with his presents, hard to tell...


Cake anyone?


Annie and Landon playing a beautiful duet.


Annie with Uncle Jake - Floyd and Cole make fun of her hat every time she wears it ("are you going to bake us a pizza, Annie?) but I think she is cute in it