Birthdays, Christmas Parties and Some Finger Slicing

Sorry no pictures on this post but I've been a serious slacker on blogging lately so I'll give a brief update of what we've been up to this christmas season.


My boys have had fun at the several christmas parties we have attended; Bullards, Resslers, Ward, etc. Although not one of our parties did brought Santa this year which was really disappointing now that my oldest is finally at an age where he actually cares. Last year all three parties did and this year none. So whoever reads this and attends one of those three parties, please put in a request to bring Santa back.

Christmas was a big hit as well. I really don't want my boys to grow up and realize that a 1 dollar slinky is not only lame but also that Santa is cheap. We were even able to spend a few days up at the cabin...but it wasn't nearly long enough.


Cameron is off of school for a couple of weeks and we LOVE having him home! His birthday was a couple of weeks ago and Max decided to get his Dad a very special birthday gift......a trip to the E.R. While Cameron and I were finishing getting ready for church the boys were eating granola bars. Max got up on the table grabbed the scissors and started cutting his granola bar. Apparently he couldn't eat the whole thing so he wanted to make it smaller. Logical enough, only he's two years and cut his pinky finger along with it. Cameron came in to a screaming Max in a pool of blood. He was still trying to eat his granola bar so it took Cameron a while to find where the blood was coming from. Once we saw the cut we knew it needed stitches so we headed to Weecare. They couldn't do anything for us and sent us to the E.R. Max hadn't cried since Cameron came in the room and found him but you could tell he was hurting so Cameron pulled out his fly fishing book and we started naming fish. The fish Black Crappie was a big hit. Go figure.

In the hospital room Cameron made the boys ballons with those latex gloves (that aren't latex anymore). When the doctor came in Brigham went right up to him, held out his ballon and asked "Do you want to hold my hand?" I think it was about the funniest thing I've ever heard and me and Cameron were rolling. The doctor thought it was pretty clever as well. It came from out of no where and you could tell by the smile on his face that laughter is exactly what Brigham wanted out of the comment.

Max's pinky has recovered quite nicely but I have a feeling that will not be the only time he takes us to the E.R. Just tonight he touched his thumb to a pan on the stove just to see if it was hot....it was.

Alright so I think that's it, if you've made it to the end of this post I am very impressed. It must mean you really like us....or you are really bored!

Introducing...

my newest little nephew Jaxton (but not so little, he was born 8lbs 11oz)

Sketch

Does anyone else think it's a little sketch that our president elect is coming from a state where the past two governors have been sent to jail because of federal corruption? I know I know, Barak Obama has nothing to do with it but I have to admit it makes me a little nervous.

Check it out here... http://www.ksl.com/?nid=157&sid=5027909

ps. No I'm not a Obama hater....just skeptical.

To Pluck or not to Pluck?

So I plucked Max's uni-brow in photoshop but I'm wondering if I should pluck it for real. What do you think? It really is getting pretty thick....he can thank his Daddy and Uncle Mike!

A late Happy Halloween

We had a fun Halloween as a family. It was fun to have a child that actually understood what was going on. Here are a few pics.



Brigham decided 2 weeks before Halloween to change his obsession from Optimus Prime to Iron Man. So he made us all pretend that he was wearing and Iron Man costume. The only problem was that every time someone would see him they would say "oh wow you're Optimus Prime" and then Brigham would proceed to freak out. Here he is in combat with his enemy Sioux.



Max decided he was a bumblebee transformer cowboy. He wore his hat over his eyes all night and if I tried to tip it up so I could see his face he would pull it back down immediately and look at me and say "no, right there". His head was soaking wet when we were finally able to pry the hat off his head. Gross!



Optimus (pretending to be Iron Man) and my Cowboys.

Creepy?

Creepy? Be honest! What is it about a floating head that looks so weird?

Talking Nonsense

Brigham is in the funniest stage right now with his talking. He is a little confused on when to use her and she so the most logical thing for him to do is to combine the two, then he has his bases covered. On our way to Grandma Dene's house Brigham will ask, "Mom are we going to SHER house yet?" Or he pointed to a woman at the store the other day and asked "What is SHER doing?" Makes sense to me.

Also did you know that Yen is actually not the Japanese currency it is a word frequently used when describing something that happened in the past. Ex. "Mom guess what I just did, I was on the stairs and YEN I jumped down and YEN I fell on my bum and YEN I didn't even cry and YEN Max just laughed at me and YEN I did it again."

Max is a polar opposite of Brigham. He is so laid back and easy going where as Brigham is super high strung and anal. Max thinks that saying the first part of a sentence or word should be optional. For example he calls Brigham, "gum". And it isn't just words with more than one syllable, truck and stuck.....simply "uck". My favorite is when he says I love you.....in Max's words "you".

I often wonder how I can still speak English.

When the boys are away the mom will????

So what do I do with my one night off while "The boys" are gone camping. Any suggestions? Anyone want to hang out?

Photo Blog

Ok so all those that are sick of checking my blog only to find more of my photography stuff on here worry no more.....I've made another blog with just my photos, so if you are interested check it out at www.shanzphotoblog.blogspot.com. It's pretty empty right now but I will get more pics uploaded soon.

A shout out to all those with new babies!

I was up literally all night last night with Max because he has Hand Foot Mouth Disease. I am wondering how I ever made it through 2 babies and definitely not wanting to go back to those sleepless nights.

So guess what I'm doing today..........NOTHING, I'm staying in my sweats all day and letting my kids watch movies all day. Am I a bad mother to neglect my duties for a day? Anyway, Good job to all those mothers who didn't get any sleep last night that will accomplish leaps and bound more than I will today:)

Note: Please don't call child services, I promise I will take care of my children's immediate needs, such as feeding and changing.

Jack

Meet Jack (aka Mini Adam), he is just oozing with personality. He is such a happy baby and therefor made taking pictures a breeze. I am loving how these pictures are turning out!

Zoey

Max had so much fun playing with his cousin Zoey the other day. Here are some pics I took of her while the boys were napping....man I wish we were somewhere with a better background and had more time.

We live above ground!

We moved. Exciting and exhausting. We are still trying to complete about a million projects and put together our house but things are starting to come together. Before we moved in we had to paint our entire house....the entire thing was pink, even the ceilings. It was a lot of hard work and we are so grateful to family and friends who were willing to help us out so much.

Brigham and Max had a very exciting first this week when they looked out their bedroom window and both squealed with excitement about being able to see the moon. We are no longer basement dwellers :)


I had to post these pictures of Brigham and his first love Sioux. Aren't these so sweet?

Photoshoot #2 - Now you know why I'm considered the UGLY sister

Ok, so there are a million pictures on this one but my sisters asked me to take pictures of them and I went crazy. It's easy to get awesome pictures when the people you are taking pictures of are gorgeous. I also had a mini photoshoot with Garber family up at the cabin. I will post those soon.

Yes we have fallen off the face of the earth

I wish I could say we are back but unfortunately that is not the case. A lot has happened over the past couple of months. We have moved out of our little basement apartment into another basement, Cameron's grandpa's house. We have been married 4 1/2 years and are yet to live above ground, but things are beginning to look up. We are in the process of buying a house. Our move was rather sudden but we are making the best of it and excited to live in our own place. The major downside is that my kids are going through withdrawals of their cousins Naki and Lexi.

This summer has consisted of several trips to the cabin, youth conference, girls camp, cherry hill, etc. Cameron has had the last 3 weeks off and he has 3 more weeks off. We have enjoyed having him so much. I'm really debating whether or not I want him to ever receive a pay check, the school schedule really is so much more flexible.

Brigham had his 3rd birthday and we had a Transformers birthday for him. Thanks Uncle Quinn for helping out with his cake. Speaking of Uncle Quinn, he has been called on a mission to Taiwan and will leave in September. We are very excited for him. Max's birthday is on Friday and he will be 2 years old. How did my boys get to be so big? As we have been trying to shop for Max's birthday Cameron and I have realized that there has been at least one good thing about Brigham having OCD, he is easy to shop for. There was no question what we would get him on his birthday. Max on the other hand is quite the opposite so it has been a challenge.

Anyway, I can't think of much more to report on so I will leave it a that. We have no Internet where we are at now so just don't expect many more posts until September.

We are back-row dwellers for a good reason!

Our experience last sunday was quite an eventful one and if I don't write it down now I never will.
Cameron was asked to give the opening prayer in sacrament meeting so we arrived a little early. We were unable to sit in our usual spot because the curtains were closed so we sat on the back row of the benches. Only a few seconds into the announcements Brigham turns to me and asks "Mom does this church have nursery?".....wow I guess we have never sat in the actual chapel before, Brigham didn't even recognize our own church. After trying to persuade him for several minutes that this was the same church we always attend he still seemed a little confused and demanded proof of where it was at. The opening prayer saved a major freak out. The conversation came to a halt when Cameron worked his way up front to say the prayer. Brigham folded his arms and sat quietly through the entire prayer. I was beginning to think this bench sitting might not be such a bad thing, more comfortable and kids are old enough to be well behaved. When Cameron finished prayer Brigham stood up, clapped, and shouted at the top of his lungs, "Yeah Daddy, you did a good job!".... spoken like a proud son. Hmm I guess we haven't gone over with him the rules of ettiquette during church.
A few attempts of running on to the stage and a few tries at the on/off light switch later we are hanging on by a thread. Good thing we brought fruit snacks or we would have been toast....oh wait not only did we decide to try bench sitting we decided the kids didn't need any snacks during sacrament anymore, oops. Needless to say the rest of sacrament meeting was attended out in the hall way.

Happy church going tomorrow! I hope yours is better than ours:)

My First Photo Shoot

I finally found a hobby that I'm passionate about. Photography. It's been so fun getting into this and I had my first kind of real photo shoot a couple of weeks ago with my cute niece and nephew. Tell me what you think (and be honest I need the criticism).

For all you bloggers

I found an awesome new feature...google reader. If you are like me and spend a lot of time checking all your favorite blogs to see if they've been updated, this will fix it. Google reader will tell you when all your favorite blogs have been updated and you can view them all here. Good luck!

P.S. I don't think it works for private blogs.

family pictures...what do you think?