Christmas..oh ya, and Brett's birthday

The slacker has returned to do another post.
Christmas has come and gone and it was a great one. We were busy...which is a reason for the lack of posts. I did a lot of homemade gifts this year and it was very time consuming. I don't have a lot of pictures to show my hard work but here are a few of the things we did.

We just had to a do a gingerbread house. The point was for Jules to help and have fun doing it. Brett and I got too into it to have her help out though. She mostly just ate some candy and picked at it the next day.
Yet another shot of Jules in Libby's bed. I went in Libby's room on Saturday and she was naked. No pajamas and no diaper. There is no way Libby could have done it, so I asked Jules if she went in there and she proudly admitted that it was her.

We always get together with my family on Christmas Eve...which is also Brett's birthday. This is how we spent some of the time. We had an air hockey tournament where even grandma played. Of course she lost...to a grand kid, but how's keeping track of that? Brett and Ron duked it out for the championship. Ron won.
We even had homemade root beer.
Of course, the tradition of new pajamas. Jules got princess...
...and Libby got...drunk?
Oh, there she is. She just got cute Christmas ones.
Christmas morning Jules woke up to find a play house with a few accessories...and a few presents to open. It was so fun to see her get all excited for each gift. She thought she was done and was content with things, but then she would get another one, and another. She was even a huge helper and opened Libby's presents for her.
Libby was a pretty happy girl too. Of course she played with the wrapping paper more than anything.
Brett being Brett. This is a cute saying that Heidi gave us. We love it.
Yay, I got an itouch, ihome, and a shuffle. I love them all so much.
Oh wait, notice the lack of presents for Brett. You see, a few weeks before Christmas, I went out and got myself an ipod. (Yes, I believe we were the only ones in the country that didn't have one; we don't have text either so call us old fashioned). So, I gave it to Brett to wrap up to give me on Christmas. A while later I was looking for something in his desk drawer and found an itouch. I had told Brett to get his own gifts because I never get him what he wants and he ends up exchanging a few things. I wasn't going to have that happen again this year so he was in charge of himself.

So when I saw the itouch, I figured it was for him because I got the ipod classic. Well, he had gone and sold the ipod to get the itouch to surprise me. So, I didn't get him anything for Christmas, assuming the itouch was his and that was enough. He did get some birthday presents the day before, but nothing for Christmas. Ya, I felt rotten all day. I love my itouch though:) More than I thought I would. He has since, gone out and purchased his own itouch so I don't feel so bad anymore.
New Years Eve night Brett had to sing in the Assembly Hall. I figured I would go listen to the performance because I hadn't heard it before. We left Libby with grandma and papa and head up to SLC. We had to be there early, so while Brett warmed up his voice, Jules and I went around and looked at things. She is obsessed with temples. If you ask her what she is going to do, she says "Get married in the temple, have to find prince first". We had a lot of fun. She wouldn't smile for pictures but she was really happy.

We even rode tracks for a little bit so she could get that experience. She loved it.
This is at the end Brett's performance. He sings with the Saltaires, a barbershop chorus. Even though I'm not a huge barbershop fan, they did a really good job.
Jules being super cheesy for this picture to show off the apron I made her for Christmas.
Heidi got married and moved out. We missed the wedding in San Diego but got to be there for the open house. It was beautiful and Heidi looked beautiful. Jules loved dancing with "The Princess".

Kids say (and do) the darnest things

We are trying to teach Jules to ask nicely the first time without us having to remind her to say please. When she demands something that she wants, we reply, "That's nice". So the other day she had this conversation with herself..."I want cheese, that's nice, can I have cheese please, in a minute". At least she reminded herself to say please. I must say, "in a minute" a lot.

I was coloring some FHE packets the other day and Jules wanted to come color next to me. I got the old markers and let her color. I had 2 of those smelly markers and told her to smell them. She made me smell the mint one. I told her it smelled like gum. She smells it again and looks at me and said, "Mom, you're so weird".

We had Libby's 6 month check-up the other day. Right when we got into the parking lot Jules started complaining that she needed to go poopies. She repeated it over and over. So we booked it into the building and head to the elevator. She continues to repeat over and over that she really needs to go poopies. I'm starting to get really nervous that she is going to diarrhea all over the place. We get to the office, I skip the check in as she announces to everyone that she needs to go poopies. We rush to the bathroom, it's occupied. We run to the other bathroom on the other side of the office, it's empty. She sits down on the potty and lets out this big fart. That's all, no poopies, just gas and she was good.

"What the heck?". She says that every now and again at really random times along with, dang it, holy cow, and you're so crazy. There are others but I can't think of any right now.

The phrase, "Who peed in your cheerios" brought on a whole new meaning to me yesterday. I was downstairs working on a project and Jules came upstairs. Heidi was upstairs studying so when Jules came down with a bowl of cheerios, I didn't think much about it. A little while later I came upstairs to find cheerios all over the counter, on the floor, and a puddle of pee.

Libby

It's been a while, sorry about that. Here are a lot of pictures of mostly Libby the past month...or more. First of all we have Halloween. I'm pretty sure Jules has swine flu so she looks miserable here. If you don't watch "The Office" you might not understand Brett's costume, or lack of costume. He is "Facebook". Get it, BOOK is written on his "face". He even has the blue shirt.
A couple of pictures of Libby in her costume. Her shirt said "Princess in Training". Thanks for all of you who voted for Libby; we did not win though.

This is Jules' hat but Jules decided to put it on Libby. She looks like Toad from Mario Bro.
Libby in her high chair. She is still getting used to the eating thing.
Jules loves the temple and sings "I love to see the Temple" all the time. She knows that the temple is Jesus' house and that Moroni is on top. Jules likes to put her hands up to her mouth a blow a horn like Moroni. It's really cute. One day we were driving errands and she told me she wanted to go see the temple. So we drove to the temple to see it.
Jules is being the "helpful" big sister and feeding Libby. It's really cute...and messy.
Callie, Brett's sister, went to Africa to teach deaf kids. She was there for 2 months so she got her hair braided. It took 6 of us over an hour to take them all out. It was pretty cool looking.

Taking out the last braid. She had the perfect crimp.
Jules and Libby hanging out on the couch together.
Libby is a total mommy's girl. I love it.
Libby is over 6 months old now and is sitting and practically crawling. She doesn't have any teeth yet, but she sure drools a lot, and bites everything.
All ready for Christmas. She even has the double chin and fat rolls to prepare her for this cold weather.
Libby in the high chair again. She's getting so big, way too fast.
We helped my mom put up her Christmas decorations. Jules was this same age when we got a picture of her in the same sleigh my mom has. We had to do one with Libby too.
Libby waking up from a nap all happy.
Then Jules had to come in and interrupt. Jules is happy, I just don't know about Libby.
Happy Birthday in December to mom, Maddie, Brett and Nettie. Good thing I didn't have the recording of us singing.
Jules and Elise love playing together. Elise is Gerald and Adoree's daughter. Elise is going to be a big sister in May, yay!
That is about all. We have been busy doing things, I just don't know what.

VOTE FOR JULES!!

Hey folks, we need your help! Please go to http://www.kosy.com/pages/disney_on_ice/vote.html and vote for photo number 228. We're trying to win the Kosy 106.5 Disney on ice vacation, and the one with the most votes wins. It's kind of a pain to go through the images, so here's the photo we put up there. It's only 1 vote per email address, so use multiple addresses if you can. Spread the word and get as many people as you can to help! We'd greatly appreciate it. Hurry, we only have until November 9th! Thanks so much!

PS - It might not work in Internet Explore, so feel free to use any other browser, such as Firefox.

Potty training

-I love that Jules had to check the potty to make sure she went poopies before she could proudly announce that she did if fact go poopies.
-I love that Jules cheers for me when I go potty.
-I love that I don't have to buy her any more diapers.
-I love that she likes to wipe her own bum.
-I love that Jules just goes into the bathroom by herself and goes without my help...most of the time.

Halloween!

Isn't his car a beauty? 2006 Hyundai Sonata. Great condition, 50K miles, only $9,500, anyone, anyone? Yup, we are trying to sell our car. Reason #1: Our registration is up this month and we don't want to pay to register it again. #2: We want a van. Now I know that some of you are thinking that we only have 2 kids and don't need a van and it's true. It was either a van or a truck because we always need something bigger for some reason and a van just seems more practical for now. So, if anyone wants a great car, let us know.
We carved pumpkins. We had my cousin over with her 2 kids and they helped out and we even made some Halloween cupcakes. It was a lot of fun. Brett's is the face, mine is the ghost, and that small one up there is a princess crown...sort of. I should have given Brett more instruction of what I was really thinking.

We finally finished our wall...mostly. We have had these frames on the wall for about 2 months now and finally filled them with our family pictures that we took 2 months ago. We still need to fill in the space under the "W" but at least it has pictures now. Kim, I'm waiting for a Mount Timpanogos picture.
On Saturday we threw a bridal shower for Brett's cousin once removed, Rachel, it was really last minute and we didn't get a ton of people but it was still fun.
Jules enjoying a red velvet cupcake at the shower.
Brett loves to take long, hot showers. So one day he was having fun and spelled out our names in the shower. Remember his is a 30 year old house. The people who remodeled the house decided to just paint over the old tile to make it "look good enough to sell". So obviously paint over tile doesn't last too long and Brett just scratched it off to spell our names.
Last night we had a ward Halloween Carnival that the YM/YW put on every year for the primary kids. This was one of my favorite costumes. 2 years ago when we were in the ward the mom made them into the Monsters Inc. characters and did a fabulous job. This year, she did the "Aladdin" theme. Aren't they adorable. I wish I got a picture of the dad and their 1 year old. He was Jafar and the baby was the parrot...so cute.
This is Jules looking all traumatized as Snow White. Grandma Wilson got these cute shoes that go perfectly with the dress. Jules loves the shoes. Unfortunately Jules woke up sick today so hopefully she will feel better by Saturday. I totally forgot to get pictures of Brett as Napoleon and Libby as a "princess in training". Stay tuned and we'll get some pictures on Saturday.
Libby is 5 months old today. I have been able to feed her at least rice for a month now, but haven't until yesterday. This is her today eating it up. My baby is so big. Time goes by so fast. She is so much fun, but the time is just passing way too fast.

Fall

So a couple of weeks ago, I was downstairs working on some primary stuff, Jules was upstairs watching some princess movie and Libby was sleeping. Everything was peaceful and quiet until I heard a loud pounding on the door. I quickly ran upstairs and didn't see Jules on the couch and Libby was screaming bloody murder, but I couldn't hear it downstairs. I quickly thought that Jules opened the front door and was found outside on the street or something and some neighbor was returning her to me. I opened the door and it was a cop. He wasn't dressed up and so I was a little hesitant when he started asking me questions like what my name was and wanting to see my drivers license to verify it was me.

Let me assure you that at this point I knew Jules was fine and was playing with Libby because I could hear her in Libby's room, so I knew nothing was wrong with her. The cop then began to question me about the previous person that lived in our house. I was extremely relieved and told him everything I knew about the person and sent him elsewhere to someone who would know more. I guess this person is in a little bit of trouble which is sad because I did know them. I was very relieved to know it had nothing to do with me and a dead child on the side of the road. Once we got that all straightened out and he left I went in and found this...


Yup, that's Jules without a diaper in Libby's crib. You can't see it from this picture but Jules had also pooped in her diaper, taken it off, and then sat on Libby or something because there was poop on Libby's bum. Fun!

That was before we started potty training her. I am proud to say that Jules is 80% potty trained. She is just having troubles pooping on the potty for some reason. The funny this is that pooping on the potty once, is how the whole thing got started on us potty training her. So, we have had a few poop accidents but didn't have a single pee pee accident. BTW, I never knew it would be so hard to try to decide on words for "poop" and "pee pee" and "fart". We just use "stinky" for that one. Although when she smells that someone has passed gas, she says that person is poopy so what do you do?

Just a fun picture of Jules playing with Libby. Don't worry, Jules is most likely laying on top of Libby while this picture was taken. Hey, it's better than yesterday when she actually rolled Libby off the couch.
Growing up we never had FHE. I always said that I would do it no matter what from day #1 of being married. Well, 3 1/2 years later we finally started doing them. It was so hard with just the 2 of us so we would do something together but it was usually just watching TV or something like that. Last week we went up the canyon and learned a little about the creation and that Heavenly Father gave us ducks and trees and a few other things we saw around the park. Here are a few pictures from that outing.
Feeding the ducks.
Notice the really pretty red trees in the background. It was so beautiful. I'm sure it's all covered by snow now.
Jules showing dad how to go down the slide.
Good job daddy!
Kicking the ball around.
So another exciting thing happened. Last Tuesday night there was a big storm. I woke up with Libby at 5 that morning and looked outside the window to see if it was windy or raining and I saw branches right in front of her window that shouldn't be there. This is the surprise we woke up to.
It just blew right over. There wasn't any damage and it ended up not being too bad. We didn't like the tree for one, and our neighbor needed some fire wood, for another, so he came and cut it all up and took it to heat his house. There is still a big stump and all the roots that we still have to deal with but it could have been a lot worse.
Brett's "sort of aunt" passed away last week and this is her and her husband's headstone. It's huge!
Libby strutting her stuff at the funeral.
What happens when you leave the grand kids downstairs for too long without supervision. That's a treadmill btw.
At least Libby and grandpa were having a good time. She didn't look very comfortable at all but was so happy lying there with grandpa.
This was FHE this week. We made carmel apples. They were a little messy but of course it was fun.
I also put these pictures up so Brett might learn to smile in pictures.

Today, we went to a park because I've walked there a few times and I wanted to know how far away it was. We got there and I saw the park and realized it had been a while since we had gone, and I didn't have anything planned that I needed to get home for, so we stopped and ran into some of our really good friends, Daryl and Katrina, who we haven't seen forever. It was so funny because their trip to the park was unexpected too. The kids got to play together and this is them on the swings. The kids got along great and it was so fun to see them again.
We fit Jules and Libby in the swing. Libby loved it. I love this pictures because it makes Libby's head look ten times bigger than Jules'.
We had Libby's 4 month appointment last week and everything is looking good. She is growing and weighs 15 1/2 pounds which is in the 79th percentile or something like that. Jules was in the 2 percentile at this age so it's been really interesting having the extremes.

I just love this picture I took of her tonight because you can pretty much count the fat rolls on her. Poor thing just wanted to eat and go to bed.
Thanks for hanging in there for this extremely long post and update. We are loving the fall and the fact that things are slowing down a bit.