Easter Party in the Park

We go to the park every Wednesday morning with some ward friends and since it's Easter we decided to have a little Easter party while we were there. It was low key but tons of fun!  I should've taken pictures of the food, but you'll just have to picture it :) We had egg shaped PB&J sandwiches, bunny shaped egg salad sandwiches, celery with peanut butter and raisins, chips, fruit and little decorations on the table. After the kids played, we had a little egg hunt and there were puzzles pieces hidden in some of them, so they got to put the puzzle together too. Lots of fun! Thanks everyone for the planning!

Smiling at the bubbles

Getting ready to go hunting

Found one!

Going through eggs, looking for puzzle pieces

One piece was missing, but it's still obvious that the puzzle is
Christ.  What Easter's really all about!

Favorite March Pictures

As many pictures as there are here, I think I did a pretty good job at weeding out my favorites! Now you can see our month in review!

Feeding Daddy our homemade cherry vanilla frozen yogurt mix.

Baby Shower goods that I got to work on! Love sewing projects! Easy ones that is :)

 Disney/Universal trip

packing up for Orlando

Waiting for our bus. Brayden was so excited that he got to ride on a bus!!

 St. Patty's Day!
We had a pretty typical day, but we went to Beef O' Brady's for dinner and they had a bounce house and face painting for free! It was so fun! Brayden loved it!!

Green shamrock pancakes

Stopped for dessert on our way home :)

  My mom was with us for a couple weeks and got to hear me speak in church one Sunday. These are from when we got home. It was past Brayden's naptime, so it was tough getting a good one, but it's not bad!

playing games!

Zander's thrilled that he gets to hold the phone. haha. Confession: he does know how to work one app on our iPod already: Peek-a-boo barn. 

Loves his food!!

Brayden with the "Big Phone" as he called it. (really the iPad)

 The mall Playground
we go every now and then when Preston has late class and I want to entertain/wear out the kids. Zander loves the slide and if I set him at the top he'll scoot himself backwards and down the slide. Haha.

 Yard Work. The bandanas are for keeping their heads cool, but I think they look super cute too!!

We found this guy in our house one night.

Our current yard situation. Lovely, right?

handsome kiddo!

Our General Conference Weekend

I was really excited for Conference this time. The most excited I've been since having children I'm sure. I knew I still wouldn't be able to sit and listen to the whole thing undistracted, but this time I was determined to teach Brayden about it and share my love for the prophet and apostles. As I got excited to teach him I got really excited to hear the prophet myself!! After the first session (maybe two) I was kinda bummed because Brayden didn't seem as into it as I had pictured and we didn't get to watch any part of conference without at least one child. Nap times just didn't work out like they should've. But, Preston reminded me that my effort was good and not to be discouraged. So come day 2 of conference I was ready for another shot!

Previously in our home, we had an FHE about when King Benjamin spoke to the Nephites and they gathered their families together in tents to hear him. So, we built our own little fort/tent in our Study to watch conference in. Brayden's reaction to the fort: "Woooow." Starting Monday I had been showing him pictures of all the apostles and first Presidency to help him learn their names and he could sing their names to the same tune as the Books in the Book of Mormon are sung to. I didn't do a good job in preparing him for my treat idea, but we did have jelly beans that were out of reach, but available if Brayden listened and heard the speakers talk about Jesus Christ. So, back to conference....

Come Sunday sessions, Brayden was pretty ready for a nap when it was going to start at noon but we let him stay up for a little because he was so excited that we were all going to go watch more "prophet show" as he called it. Presiden Eyring conducted the first session and when Brayden saw him he pointed and yelled "EYRING! There he is!" You can only imagine how happy my heart was to hear that! Precious. We put Brayden to bed after the first speaker I think, but he was up for the next session.  When the session started, Brayden asked "more Eyring?" Then the songs started and we saw Preston's dad in the choir and told Brayden "there's Grandpa!" He must not have actually seen his grandpa, because every time the camera would show a male shot of the choir and there was a grey haired, glasses wearing man Brayden would shout - "Bapa! There he is!" haha. In fact, one of the speakers from the 70 who spoke Brayden called grandpa too. Haha. What I really loved was how enthusiastic he was about finding the apostles all throughout the session and even when I didn't think he was listening at all, he'd suddenly say "Jesus Christ. Jellybean!" And the speakers really had said Jesus every time! So, even when he was playing on my phone or fishing through Zander's toys, he could be listening too.  Both days of conference he really enjoyed putting a sticker on the picture of the speaker when it was one of the apostles or first Presidency (because those are the pictures we had for him). And he got very excited when he could recognize someone.

I'm just so filled with joy at how enthusiastic Brayden was with Conference in the end! And I'm also filled with urgency to alter a few habits of mine and create some new ones. Conference leaves me with a mix of determination, joy, peace and also a nice to do list. But, I love it!

Hope you got to watch and if not, go check it out!!

March

Didn't March just begin? And yet my calendar says otherwise. . . hmmm. Well, here's our month in review. Mumsy (my mom) came to visit again for 2 weeks. Preston had his Spring break, but had to work most of the week anyway. However, he did get to join my mom and I in Orlando for one day at Universal Studios and a temple visit. So fun! Besides that, we did several projects with my mom - yard work, getting carpets cleaned, painting a file cabinet with chalkboard paint for the boys, etc.  And of course the boys keep growing up! Here's their newest.

ZANDER
Zander popped out another tooth on the 9th! He now has two bottom teeth that are very adorable :) He is now sitting. He has mastered the walker and goes wherever he likes. He's already trying to open cabinets and doors. He gets up on his hands and knees and rocks back and forth, but no crawling yet. He talks lots and we have many "conversations" during the day. My favorite talking face of his involves holding his chin to the side while he talks. I can't really describe it, but it's so silly and cute.  He has slowed down in his growth and when we went to the Doc this month he was only at about 50% instead of 80%.  But, he's still full of cute baby chunks! He loves to eat food and surprisingly seems to enjoy some of his veggies more than his fruits. Not so much peas, but carrots, squash and sweet potatoes are his favorites. His favorite fruit is Apple Strawberry Banana.  He is also getting into a good nap routine! YAY!!!!! 2 naps (every now and then 3) that last at least an hour.  But, he keeps waking up every night around 3:00 am. He doesn't eat and he's comforted pretty easily, but he just can't stop waking.

Some of my favorite little Zander-isms are when he uses his "pinchers" and grabs things with only his tiny pointer finger and thumb out. He can grab lots of things with his pinchers. He loves to grab my nose and my wedding ring like that. My other current favorite thing he does is when he's eating.  If he's holding something like a spoon he loves it when I tap his spoon with the one I'm feeding him with. He laughs and gets the hugest grin (which is always a nice way to get him to open!).  If I see him holding his arm out to me with a spoon in hand and a sparkle in his eye, I know exactly what he wants - A little tap tap from Mum mum :)  Love it.

BRAYDEN
Brayden is quite a little talker, but likes to slur/change words a lot so I can understand most of what he says, but everyone else only gets about half. Haha. Improvement though. He now says or tries to say almost everything we ask him to.  And he's using little sentences.  He still says "joo joo" (for hold you) when he wants me to hold him, but other than that one thing he's figured out the you/me thing and refer to himself as "me." He also has named himself Den, but it sometimes sounds like Zden. Sort of close to the "Zan" that he uses for Zander. He did call Zander Zow a couple of times too. He just comes up with the strangest names for things.

He still loves singing Twinkle little star and can now do several variations.  We like to sing it fast, super fast, up high, rap style, and whispering. Haha. Very silly. He's also getting to the stage where he knows when something is silly or doesn't belong. For example, we were driving to school the other day and Brayden was singing his twinkle little star and then started talking about the houses he saw. Then he said twinkle little house. I asked "twinkle little house?" And he laughed and laughed and kept saying twinkle little house and laughing at himself.  He's done a couple things like that.

Besides Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, he now sings all his bedtime primary songs with us and for any words that are too fast or hard for him he just grunts until he can say the word. Haha.  And he's now wanting "his" music on in the car too, so we have lots of children's tunes on these days and he likes to sing along.

Brayden now loves the idea of friends. He can say "friend's house" and has asked to go play. He  gets excited when I tell him we're gonna see friends and it's really cute.

He's also liking to do things by himself. If he wants to do something and I come to help, he'll tell me "No. Self."


Basically, I have very good, very cute children and I love them so much!

Oh, and I can't wait for General Conference this weekend!!