January Escape to Boise

Last night Ethan and I returned to the land of ice and snow drifts after 10 wonderful days visitng my parents in Boise.
I love living in Des Moines and we are grateful for the schooling Clark is getting here, but it STINKS to be so far from family! This trip was especially hard saying goodbye because Ethan is old enough to LOVE his grandparents! He is a lucky little boy to have wonderful grandparents on both sides, and I just want him to be near all of them all the time! But we were grateful for the days we had!
Here are some of the highlights from the fun we had!

Meeting Mary and her family (my mom's new friend who is a refugee from Rwanda).

Dinner with the Vaterlaus'. Ethan loves being in the action!

My Grandma P. was there for the first part of the trip, and it was so nice to see her!
Visiting McCall and the annual Winter Carnival.

This sculpture was a slide for the kids. Ethan loved it, he started out on his behind facing forward but the slide flipped him to his belly backwards every time.

The king and his throne.

Ethan got carsick on the ride up and threw up all over his clothes, luckily we had his snow pants! We found a thrift shop and bought him a very stylish outfit, it looked especially good with his boots!

James giving Ethan his first water ski lesson!

A definite highlight was my brother and sister in law James and Erica coming for the weekend. Ethan loved playing with those two. Today he has wandered around the house asking for Grandpa and Erica. It was so nice of them to drive to Boise to see us especially since James has 3 tests this week and is starting a new job!

Ethan had his first experience bowling. For a while there he was ahead of a few of us (I won't mention any names). When his mama helped him he bowled his first strike, and then was ticked his turn was over and that he didn't get to go twice!

Reading stories with Grandpa.

Two buddies! Everyone at my parent's church thinks that Ethan is a little mini me of my Dad!

A highlight for Ethan was a trip to the "zoo" also known as Cabelas with Grandpa while the girls had a Miss America party Saturday night!

Love the cheesy grins!

My Dad set up the tee-pee for Ethan and filled it with animals while he was napping. He was pretty excited to wake up to this in the living room.

The best part of coming home last night was when Ethan saw Clark in the baggage claim clear across the room. He started screaming "Dada, Dada," he jumped out of his stroller and sprinted in his footed pajamas as fast as he could giggling and shrieking the whole way to his Daddy.

Thanks Mom and Dad for flying us home. We had a great time and are missing you guys already! We love you!

Brainwashed

Tonight Ethan is wearing a black shirt with yellow writing that says "Lucky Rooster Football." Tonight during dinner he leaned down, pointed to the letters on his shirt, and read "BYU duders." Apparently all letters read BYU.

Clark was pretty proud. You know what they say, "train a child up in the way he should go and he will not depart from it."

Martha Stewart Strikes Again

We celebrated Martin Luther King Day recuperating from colds, Ethan has been sick about 5 days now and yesterday Clark and I came down with the same fun.
To make the day a little bit festive in honor of Dr. King's and my Dad's birthday I thought it would be fun to make a Jell-o train using a cake mold. Ethan loves trains and I knew he would love Jell-o, what could be better?
Tonight we sat at the table and he was so excited to help me take the engine and train cars out of the mold...something went wrong...as you can see our Jell-o train was really a Jell-o blob!

Luckily Ethan is really easy to please! He thought it was great fun squeezing orange Jell-o chunks out of the train mold, yelling "bell-o," and then eating it. Didn't know a person could ruin a Jell-o mold!

Hope you all had a great holiday!

Excited to announce...

We had our ultrasound today and to celebrate Clark is going to buy me this hideous shirt:

We are so happy for Ethan to have a little brother! After seeing him run around and wrestle with all of his cousins in Colorado it was obvious we need another boy in our family!

Family Home Evening with a 1 Year Old!

Every Monday night (well most) we try to have Family Home Evening, we sing songs, have a gospel lesson, and play games with Ethan. Tonight Clark had a great lesson ready using pictures of Ethan's grandparents and talking about prayer and Heavenly Father...

Ethan was just so out-of-control excited that his Dada was home he was literally bouncing off the walls...we had about 45 mins. of this:

If nothing else Ethan gets a REALLY good workout from our family home evenings and we get lots of laughs!

Power of a Positive Attitude

Here are the current conditions: 19 degrees, slight breeze, sun shining, man sized icicles, and snow drifts taller than my car in my driveway. (Definitely an improvement from the past week of -20 degree windchills, snowy, no sun, COLD!)

I just left the bank, as I was leaving the cashier said, "have a nice day and get out and enjoy this great weather while we have it!"
"Sure will," I replied...but I was thinking, "Is she crazy? It is well below freezing and the whole world is slick and icy, yes it may be 40 degrees warmer than it was a few days ago but not quitet my ideal park day."

It's all about perspective! I guess I should be more of a "my frosted frozen glass filled with ice chunks and slurpee is half full" type of girl!

I'm a Survivor...

...of college football bowl season!

Last night Ethan and I made cookies together to celebrate the final bowl game of the season! We survived!

I have to admit I will miss moments like this:

I also have to admit I had a lot of fun on Monday making BSU posters and dressing Ethan up in Broncos colors just to antagonize Clark a little (he was cheering for TCU, keeping it in the Mountain West conference). Ethan is good at yelling, "go, go, go!" We had some friends over to watch the game and celebrate Boise State's big win!

When will Clark learn to believe in the Broncos (especially when it comes to big bowl games)?