Crazy Jack

Jack is nothing like Owen was as a baby. If you told Owen not to do something, he didn't do it. Of course, with Owen I figured this was due to my excellent parenting skills! However, Jack was sent to humble me. He does not listen and gets into everything. I now realize how good Owen was to me, despite being a bad sleeper.

A few weeks ago, my friends Meredith informed me that her son Ryan, who is four days older than Jack, started climbing out of his crib. Initially, I though poor Meredith, that sucks! Much to my dismay, Jack started getting out of his crib not even a week later. I was sitting in the family room with my parents and Robby after putting the kids to bed. Not long after I heard footsteps. Jack walked right out, sat on the couch and cuddled up to Robby. I immediately accused Owen of helping him get out. But Owen insisted Jack got out himself. Hoping it was just a fluke, I put Jack back in his crib. He then repeated to get out 8 times in about 10 minutes.

When Owen started getting out of his crib I just told him not to and he didn't do it. Not so with Jack! We finally had to go in his room and turn his crib around backwards. Poor Jack is now in a cage because the bars are higher than his head. It makes it hard to get him in and out, but worth it because he is trapped!

Here is the crib now that it is backwards!

Owen's Fourth Birthday

On February 11th Owen turned 4! He had been counting down the days and was so excited when it was finally his birthday. We decorated the house after he went to bed the night before so he woke up to balloons, signs and even writing on the mirror in the bathroom. Unfortunately, his actual birthday was not very exciting. I am mean and took him to the doctor to have the scar on his forehead check out. Ever since it started healing it had a little white thing hanging out of it. We waited several weeks thinking it would go away on it's own. When it didn't disappear I decided to have the doctor check it out. It turns out that the white thing hanging out is one of the stitches they put in under his skin that was supposed to have dissolved. The doctor was little baffled as to why it hadn't dissolved. So she clipped it close to the skin and we are going to watch it and hope it either comes out on it's own or the scar will heal over it.

Anyway, after going to the doctor we pretty much just hung around the house all day. Since it is tax season Robby didn't get home until almost 8. But we figured we should probably do something so we took him to his all-time favorite restaurant, The Spaghetti Factory. We pretty much closed the place up and our poor waiter and to find the few remaining waiters to come and sing "Happy Birthday" to Owen. When we got home Owen opened a couple of presents: a Chick Hicks hauler, new Lightning McQueen slippers, and a BYU basketball jersey and shorts.

To make up for the not so great birthday, I made his favorite dinner of chicken pillows, mashed potatoes, and asparagus, the next night. And yes he really does love asparagus, as well as broccoli, green beans, corn and artichokes.

On Friday night we had all of Robby's family over for a birthday party. I spent all day working on his Pirate Ship birthday cake. But if I do say so myself, it turned out pretty awesome! And yes, the pirate ship and island are both made (almost) entirely of cake.


Here is Owen blowing out his candles with Payton, Mayce, Fallyn, and Scotty.


Just for fun, here are some pictures of Owen's past birthdays.





I keep telling myself I need to stop making the crazy cakes because its going to come back and bite me when I don't do it for all of my kids birthdays. You know, "Owen is the oldest. You love him more than me! You never made me a special birthday cake!" But deep down inside I really enjoy making the cakes. I just wish we didn't have to cut them up and destroy them so quickly!

Visit from Grandma Jane and Grandpa Jim

I am finally back - to the blog world that is. I could list all sorts of excuses why I haven't added a post in a while but it all amounts to the fact that I rarely have the patience to sit down and do it.

After recovering from Christmas and the whole New Year's Eve debacle we enjoyed a little bit a down time. I had no Primary stuff going on and the boys and I were able to take a break from all the craziness. I will admit we had several days where we just vegged around the house and did pretty much nothing at all.

At the end of January my parents came to visit us. Since they had been in South Africa since I had Owen, it was the first time I had ever had my parents come and stay at my house. We were excited to have them and were lucky to have great weather while they were here. They came on a Wednesday and as I had expected my mom had me cleaning my windows, painting a kitchen cabinet and fixing our fireplace within a couple of days. It's not that my mom made me do any of this, it is just that she helped me get the motivation to do things I had been meaning to do for a long time. Meanwhile, my dad fixed little things around my house, including my recently crashed computer that he was able to bring back from the dead. He was even nice enough to back up my computer after he fixed it, so if it crashes again at least I won't lose everything.

The boys had lots of fun with Grandma and Grandpa around. They enjoy it when they aren't stuck at home with just me all day. We spent most of the days playing outside. Here are some pictures of the boys playing in our driveway. Our driveway slopes towards the house so the boys like to push their bikes and cars up to the top and ride all the way down. Jack is just getting the hang of it but Owen is an old pro.


Jack is fearless. So when you put the skates on him, watch out! He won't let you help him at all and it is a miracle he hasn't had to get stitches yet as a result.



Since the weather was so nice we also went to the park several times. Owen is even starting to get a little braver on his bike. He no longer has to get off the bike to go up and down the curbs on the way to the park. Owen is great big brother and always helps Jack down the big slide.


While my parents were visiting Owen discovered his love for "video games." He soon found that Grandpa's iPhone had tons of games on it. All day long he would ask to play on Grandpa's iPhone. Grandpa was even a good sport and played LOTS of Tic-Tac-Toe with Owen, who had no concept of how to play it. Unfortunately, Owen now wants to play on my iPhone all the time. I finally let him until he locked me out of my phone. Somehow, he put a password on my phone so that I couldn't even use it. I cannot figure out how he did this since he would have had to enter the same four digits two times in row. Not to mention he can't read so he wouldn't have had any idea this is what he was supposed to do. Anyway, after living without my phone for two days, I finally got it fixed. No more iPhone for Owen! Here he is playing on my Dad's iPhone.


The highlight of my parents' visit was going to "Wicked" in San Francisco. We went with Robby's parents and his sister and her husband as well. I had heard it was good but had no idea how much I would love it! I am already trying to convince Robby we need to go again as soon as tax season is over. The soundtrack is also in my CD player constantly. We listen to it so much that Owen has even started singing along.

We were sad to see my parents go but we knew they were excited to get home and finish getting settled in their new house. We can't wait to see them again at the beach in June!