Christmas Break

We had a fabulous Christmas together here in Idaho. We stayed here waiting for the baby to come, but she hasn't come yet. We went to our ward Christmas party where Santa Clause made an appearance. Ethan really likes him, but he won't say Santa, he calls him "ho ho ho."

This is Ethan participating in one of our very exciting Christmas Eve activities... making jingle bells, and then singing along with the song.

Christmas morning was great because Ethan is still too young to wake us up at the crack of dawn. We got up at a leisurely 8:00am (it would have been later, but I got tired of waiting for Ethan to wake up). Ethan loves the horsey that Santa brought for him. He enjoys trying to feed his horse treats. We got a few pretty crazy snow storms over Christmas break and we spent a lot of time out in the snow trying to keep the driveways clear. This is just a really cute picture of Ethan, who is, by the way, shoveling the road. Gotta make it easier on the cars.Today we got snow that was a bit more wet so we were actually able to build a snowman.Steve wanted me to take this picture to show just how much snow he has shoveled over the break.This movie is Ethan sliding down a snow slide we made (before the last storm came through and buried the slide).

Snow

The snow has been coming and staying and then coming some more, and I LOVE IT! I am not the only one in our family who appreciates the change from winters of rain to winters of snow. Ethan loves to play in it, and help Dad shovel it. Instead of calling it snow he calls it snowman. One of the first things he says in the morning is "shovel snowman mama, shovel snowman!" This might have something to do with his obsession with the movie Frosty the Snowman, and the song that goes with it, the "thumpity thumpity thumpity" song. It might also have something to do with the fact that we have hot chocolate when he comes back inside. He also loves snow gear. He likes to wear "glubs" even if we're hanging out inside. He also enjoys putting on my boots, or Steve's boots and stomp around the house.There are just so many reasons to love snow! I think Steve appreciates it too, even though he spends a good deal of time shoveling snow (longer than it would take if he could just do it by himself).

Ethan it's your Birthday, Happy Birthday Ethan!

Ethan turned two on Monday. We started the day off by making his Robot Cake. We baked it, cut it out, added the Twinkies and candy decorations. Ethan loved his Robot Cake, but he did not love that he didn't get to eat it immediately after we made it.

After we made the cake, Steve came home early so we could go and have a fun birthday lunch. We went to the McDonald's and ate nuggets and let Ethan play in the play place. He got stuck the first time through, but after we sent a little boy in to help him he got the hang of it and went through it over and over again. After McDonald's we rented Kung Fu Panda from Red box and got some balloons for Ethan. We went home and watched the movie and then we had dinner and cake and opened presents. This is Ethan blowing out his candles.This is Ethan enjoying his yummy cake and ice cream. He sure did like that robot cake. He also enjoyed opening all of his presents. Toys and clothes galore. Thank you grandmas! All in all I think he had a pretty good birthday. He was definitely hyped up on sugar by the end of the day, so maybe that's a good enough indicator :) It is crazy to think that he is two now. Time sure does fly. I love having Ethan in my life to share my days with. He is so smart and so funny and so particular! He really does crack me up! We love you Ethan!

Home For Thanksgiving

We decided to go home for Thanksgiving. The drive was not bad, Ethan watched movies and sang songs and watched out the windows... pretty much everything but take a nap, even though we left at nap time so that he would. By about 2 hours into it he was done, but somehow we convinced him to go the rest of the way. When we got to my parents house we let him out into the yard to release all the wiggles. We raked up a big pile of leaves for him to play in. Steve got in on the action too.

For Thanksgiving dinner we went over to my uncle Paul's house with a bunch of extended family and friends. The food was wonderful, and so was the company. We spent the day bowling, playing games and gorging ourselves on the 17 pies that my mom made this year. Friday we decided to be brave and do a little shopping, but we waited until the afternoon so we could avoid some of the crazies that come out on Black Friday. Then we went down to Steve's parent's and played games and hung out with relatives and saw the lights on the pond. This picture is Ethan and Grandma playing Mr. Potato Head, but dressing up themselves!Saturday was Thanksgiving dinner number two... how lucky that we got the best meal of the year twice! We did some more game playing and some more bowling and a lot of fun with family. We went to the Ranch to throw rocks in the water and Grandpa took Ethan to check out some tractors.

Yes, that is Steve in the bucket... once again he decided to get in on the fun. And since the pictures don't do it justice, here's a video of the fun.

We spent the day Sunday visiting with family and eating leftovers, then we drove home that night so that Steve could get back to work on Monday. Ethan and I got to work on Monday too and put up all of the Christmas decorations and the tree. I also taught my first piano student and we've been trying to get all of the Christmas shopping out of the way so it is done when baby decides to come early :) Merry Christmas!

Quoth the Raven "Nevermore"

Well life has definitely settled in here. We are well into the daily grind of life, which I must admit can sometimes be very boring. Fortunately we've had some really great weather and have been able to spend a good portion of it outside on the new park they put in by our house.

Steve and I now both officially have callings. He is the Elders Quorum secretary and I am... Beehive advisor. For those of you who are wondering, yes, this is the same calling I had in my last ward. Apparently I didn't learn enough. I am SO excited to be working with the Young Women again though, I really love serving the youth. They also asked us both to speak on Sunday, so we've been feverishly coming up with talks (and for me a talk and a lesson).

Another exciting and momentous occasion happened this week. Steve drove to Oregon to take the last part of the boards, which (assuming he passed, which I'm sure he did) marks the very last test he will ever have to take. Considering the years that he has spent in school and the numerous tests he has taken, this is a HUGE milestone and we are thrilled to be done with it.

When he came home he was sick, probably from the hours of studying and driving and the lack of sleep, but he is doing well now and is working really hard on his website (it is a very time consuming and computer consuming project).

I have finished a few projects too! The never ending rag quilt that I was working on for baby girl is finally done. I don't think I'll ever make another one. It was very easy to do, but my hands never want to hold another pair of scissors again.

I also made this Family Home Evening Chart (I still have to do the tags with our names on them). I thought it turned out pretty cute considering the amount of craftiness I was genetically bestowed. We'll see how it looks when it is finally hanging on the wall... hopefully it will be a good reminder to have FHE :)

Ethan picked up some new tricks this week. My favorite is that he has started singing along to songs. He mysteriously knows all of the words to "Once there was a Snowman" and it is probably his favorite right now. I have tried to capture it on video, but without any success yet. I'll post a video when I get one. He had his friend Skye over the other day and was very protective of his red ball. The green ball was for Skye and the red ball was his and there was a serious melt down if ever the colors got switched. He is also very serious about the color of shirt he wears every day. Some days he wants red, some days blue, some days green, but if ever I try to trick him because the red shirt is dirty then I can expect some protesting. What a funny, color conscious boy. I can't believe he isn't a baby anymore. *sigh* Two years goes by way to fast.

Steve is Great!

Steve has been hard at work putting together a website for the office he works for. You should check out his webpage at http://www.canyonspringschiropractic.com/. If you want to help move his webpage up in the search engine's results you can link his webpage to your blogs or webpages, that way when people search for a Chiropractor in Twin Falls it will come up on the first page instead of the fiftieth (or wherever it is :). Also, I've put a link to it on the side of our blog so that you can see all of his hard work whenever you feel the urge ;)

Visit from Grandma and Grandpa

This week was a pretty mundane week. All week long Ethan was excited for Grandma and Grandpa to come visit. We had a wonderful visit. They came Friday evening and brought a ton of food storage for us. I thought I would post a picture of the shelves in our garage, because they are our first ever food storage shelves. She brought us canned tomatoes and applesauce and grape juice, we are so lucky to have such a wonderful grandma to do this for us!
Saturday we spent the day playing. We went back to the Hydroproject to have some fun. We had such a great time, and Ethan loved playing with the Cat tail and in the leaves. Fall is such a great time of year.

Sunday we went to church and had dinner and then the grandparents had to say goodbye. Ethan was not happy about that, and he is still telling me that things in our house are grandma's or grandpa's. Luckily we'll get to see family one more time for Thanksgiving.

Super Halloween!

Here is our little superman trying on his Halloween costume. We tried it on earlier in the day to make sure that he would wear it. He loved it and didn't want to take it off. We also made pumpkin sugar cookies to decorate, but it turns out that he didn't want to decorate them, he wanted to eat them! We went to our ward Trunk-er-Treat. Ethan loved it. He went around to any adult he could find and held up his bucket to them with eyes just begging for candy. When we ran out of candy then he started begging for my doughnut. He's a sugarholic. When we got home that night he was bouncing off of the walls and it took him forever to go to bed.

There's nothing like counting candy for a little learning experience.

Another thing we did this week was have an ultrasound done. I haven't ever had one done this late in the pregnancy. I was measuring a little small so they just wanted to make sure that everything was growing like it was supposed to. This is a picture of baby girl's face. Think she will look just like me or what?? haha. Anyway, they said that you think they would be able to see more later on, but because baby is so squished in there it is harder to see anything. She had her face squashed into the placenta the whole time and this is the best picture they could get. I'm sure she'll be much cuter when she comes :) They also said that she weighs 3lbs 6oz right now... how they figure that I'll never know, I just know she feels heavier than that. Either way we're down to the single digit weeks countdown. 8 to go! One last thing we did this week. We finally got to watch the base jumpers going off of the bridge. We drove into Twin to do some shopping and take a walk along the rim trail. Just as we started walking there were four guys up on the bridge getting ready to jump, so we stopped to watch. Ethan kept saying "more jump more jump!" He loved it. Hopefully he won't ever try it. The video on our phone didn't work out, so here's a Youtube video that shows what it looks like.

First Snake

This past week we had very nice weather, so we decided that we should wash our cars before it was time to put the hose away for the winter. We bundled Ethan up in his snow gear so he would stay warm despite all the water, and set to work. Ethan was a surprisingly good helper, until he started washing the car that we already had clean.
The next day we set out to find some of the hidden beauties of Idaho. We started out at Malad Gorge where there is supposedly a waterfall... it must only be a spring waterfall because we couldn't see one. We were disappointed and still had some day left so we set off to try out another place, Thousand Springs Hydro Project. We were very pleasantly surprised with crystal clear water, bright green algae and waterfalls in both directions! We didn't have our camera so Steve's phone had to work for the one waterfall that was close enough for me to hike to. The other exciting adventure was that Ethan got to hold his first snake. We saw a gardener snake as we were hiking and Steve caught it and gave it to Ethan. He didn't know whether he was really excited or terrified, but either way there was a lot of giggling and screaming. We played with it until it tried to bite Steve, then we put him back down. I wish I had had my camera!
Another fun adventure of the week was FHE pumpkin carving night. We had some friends over for dinner and to carve pumpkins. All of my pictures with Ethan and his friend Skye are blurry because they wouldn't stop trying to blow out the candles in the pumpkins or taking the lids on and off of the pumpkins. So here are pictures of just the pumpkins. This first one is Steve's masterpiece.
These two are mine (the bat) and Ethan's happy pumpkin.This is Ethan the next day trying to reach in and pull the candle out. At least I got him to sit still next to the pumpkin! I think he even still has pumpkin guts in his hair, good thing I didn't zoom in :)

This week on the farm...

We have been having a lot of fun playing this week, and even got to have Grandma and Annie come and visit, which was the highlight of the week for us. In fact, Ethan loved it so much that he won't let me put on my shoes because he thinks they are Annie's shoes. He also keeps going outside and looking for grandma and saying "gama's house". Another thing that we did this week was take a drive out to Sun Valley to see the very end of the changing leaves. It was beautiful... so beautiful that we forgot to get out the camera. This is Ethan and Steve playing in the dirt by the tractor. I'm pretty sure I've mentioned this before, but Ethan is obsessed with dirt. He would fill up his toy tractor with dirt and go over and dump it out in the big tractor.
E is also a big fan of swinging, he will swing all day long if you let him. In this particular picture he was swinging and being entertained by dad throwing the frisbee really high into the air and running around trying to catch it.
We also got grass this week! And, since some of you still haven't figured out that we moved, here is a picture of the outside of our humble abode, and our festive pumpkin.
I also had a request by Jen to see a picture of pregnant Claire... well here it is, look fast because it is likely to be the only picture of pregnant Claire that you ever see.
In our continuing preparations for Halloween we found a pumpkin patch just down the road from us, so we thought that we'd check it out and add to our little pumpkin collection. They gave Ethan a ride out to the patch in a trailer pulled by a 4wheeler, aka bike. We found a little Ethan sized pumpkin, and a mama sized pumpkin, and we had a lot of fun wandering through all of the pumpkins and dirt and weeds, etc. Plus, I got this really cute picture of my boys.

This video is from when we went to the park. Ethan likes to go face first down the slide now, which is why he has a huge wound by his right eye. He also thinks he is Nacho from Nacho Libre... I really can't explain his unhealthy obsession with Nacho, it just is. What a funny kid.

Bikes, Snow and Mingos

We have been having so much fun playing outside since we've been here. Ethan is really fond of bike rides, and tractors, which is really a great combination for a family home evening activity. So Monday we went for a fun bike ride and watched them harvest the sugar beets, Steve on my bike because of some pregnancy/balance issues, and me on Steve's bike. It is so nice to live somewhere where we can just hop on our bikes and be out in the country enjoying the fresh air and sunshine. Another thing that we are loving is that we had the first snowfall of the winter. We are SOO excited that there is snow here, snow is SOO much better than rain :) Steve and I were both commenting how much more it felt like home to have the snow falling... but it feels a little like Troutdale still because of the wind, and we love that too.

The other exciting news from this week is that Steve got his degree in the mail, and we also celebrated him treating his first patients (he had four this week :) I made a cake to celebrate... but since I don't know any "I just saw my first patients" songs we did away with the candles. Things are finally all set up at the office and now we just need to get the word out that he's there and ready to help. Don't worry how he is also already building a computer for someone. No matter how busy he is, he will always find a way to be building a computer.

These are some photos/videos of some fun things we did this week. Since the weather was freezing cold over the weekend we spent some time indoors, and since that is boring, we had to be creative. Ethan played with all the pillows, and got around to fixing a few things in the kitchen. The video is awful because Steve took it on his phone, so this is just how it's gonna look :P He also discovered that he really likes throwing snowballs, but we don't have any footage of that, or of him all bundled up in his snow gear, which is really cute too.
Another weird but funny thing that Ethan does... I have tried to teach Ethan how to say pumpkin, which he can say, but instead of calling pumpkins pumpkins, he prefers to call them "mingo". I have no idea what a mingo is, or why he thinks it is a pumpkin, but he carries around his little pumpkin trick or treat basket and says "mingo basket mingo basket!" He sure keeps me laughing :)

A funny story about Steve this week is his weird fetish with sugar beets. I mentioned that we watched them harvest them as we went on our bike ride. While we were doing that Steve got an idea that he wanted to sneak into the field when they were done harvesting, find a sugar beet and eat it, just to see what it tasted like. So today we went out for a walk in the freezing cold, snuck into the field and found a sugar beet. This was his response to the taste of the sugar beet... "if you suck on it it tastes like sugar, but if you chew on it, it tastes like a beet!"

Why I Can't Wait for Grass and a Cute Video

Here is a cute video of Ethan before we moved. He learned in Flagstaff about empty cupboards and when mine started emptying out he had a grand ole time.



This is some footage from our soon to be front yard... Ethan really likes dirt. I am really excited for grass :)


Anyway, things are great here in South Central Idaho. Steve is busy busy getting shop set up and I am busy busy getting house set up and trying to figure out where things are and what not. Ethan seems not to notice that we have moved. He is doing great in his big boy bed at night, but naps have struggled and then disappeared. He compensates for this by sleeping from 7:30pm to 8:30am... I like that he sleeps in but I hate dealing with cranky, no nap Ethan from about 5:00 till bedtime. Anyway, we're working out the kinks.

Real World Here We Come!

So we spent our time waiting to find out if we could move by trying to explore some of the things in Portland that we hadn't done yet. On Labor day we went to the OMSI and Ethan loved the Dinosaur exhibits and all of the fun things in the Science playground. Then we ventured over to Sauvie Island, this picture is Steve and Ethan on top of the Straw Pyramid. We also played on the several tractors they had, and they had an animal barn. Ethan really loved all the roosters and went around saying cock-a-doodle-doo all day. Our next adventure was back to a beach that we found earlier. It is the most awesome beach on the Sandy river, and we love it so much that we've been three times already. It is a very nice way to spend the afternoon lounging on the beach and throwing rocks in the water. In this picture Ethan was sliding down the sand bank into the water. And I just thought that the video was really cute, so I'm sharing :)

Well, our waiting is finally at an end. Yesterday we found out that they approved Steve's postceptorship in Twin Falls Idaho! We are moving in about a week. We are very excited to finally know what we'll be doing, and are now looking for a place to live. Thank you all for keeping us in your prayers while we were waiting and waiting and waiting to find out where the future would take us.

August News

Our apartment complex decided to add some more dirt to the landscaping and so they piled mounds of dirt on the basketball court so they could distribute the dirt later. Ethan LOVES these mounds of dirt. He looks out at the basketball court and says "uh-oh". We decided one day to let him play on the piles of dirt, he climbed up them and slid down them. When he got off we realized that there were thousands of little slivers in the bottom of his feet. It took two pairs of tweezers and a very impatient Ethan, but I think we got most of them out.

The blackberries came on and we had a grand time picking and eating them. Ethan spent his time throwing dirt in his hair and face while we picked and then after we got him cleaned up he saw an excellent opportunity to savor some "juice" aka blackberry smoothie. Needless to say he had multiple baths that day.

Next we were off to Flagstaff for a fun family reunion. We flew into Salt Lake and then drove down with my mom and sister. Ethan was a very good boy for the very long drive. It was so great to see everyone and Ethan got a long pretty well with his cousins, except for Sophie, who is just a little older than him and who he liked to pinch and steal toys from. He was especially cute with Lindsay, but he seemed to want to sit on her head an awful lot. He also didn't like anyone who Grandpa was paying attention to that wasn't him. We enjoyed going hiking and checking out Sedona, but mostly just being together. When Ethan and I got back from Flagstaff it was time for a visit to the doctor to check up on the soon to be addition to our family. Some how I have the very uncanny ability to always be wrong when predicting the gender of our children, and Steve has the uncanny ability to always be right. This case was no exception and we learned that we are having a girl! We are SO excited, and I am glad to be able to start planning and nesting, thought I'm trying to save it all up until we move.

We also took another trip to the zoo, which is what we seem to end up doing on lazy Saturday afternoons. Ethan really loves looking at all of the animals, and he always has a good time.This, I suppose brings me to today, which looked to be a very productive day... I was getting ready so that we could make a family trip to the grocery store, Ethan and Steve were outside playing ball. Instead of going to the grocery store (which I still need desperately to do) we ended up spending our late morning in the emergency room. Ethan loves to hold rocks, and he loves to kick balls, he was doing both this morning. He missed the kick and fell down and somehow the weight of the rock in his hand added just the extra smoosh at a very unlucky angle to break his pinkie finger. They x-rayed it and put it in a splint (which he left on until we left the ER). He really is a trooper, and took all of this very well. There is no denying that he is a boy through and through, he even managed to break a bone before his second birthday. I can only hope that he gains some sense of caution in the ensuing years.

For those of you wondering if we are ever going to move... so am I :) We find out soon about Twin Falls and we'll keep you posted. :)