Pictures and Some Walking

Ethan Age 3
Chloe Age 1
Watch this video on mute if you want to NOT hear the very very proud mom in all her annoyingness :)

Silliness

Chloe thinks it is fun to have me put these glasses on her, and the pull them off and repeat numerous times :)Ethan thought it would be fun to hoard the pen drawer and try and put them all in his pocket. Apparently I'm going to have to go get him a pocket protector.
This is of Chloe who can stand up all by her self... she refuses to walk though, that would be too much work.

Goings On

Christmas morning: Ethan is elated to see that Santa has some how managed to find a red spaceship, red astronaut and a green alien. Go Santa!

Cousin Thomas and Chloe, going to town on Thomas' Christmas treats. Yummmm....Here we are about to go snowshoeing.It was beautiful and very fun, as always. This time we turned the snow into a picture frame.Here is one of Steve's many stellar jumps. Talk about extreme snowshoeing :)We also spent some time sledding. Chloe and Thomas didn't really know what to think, but everyone else had a great time.This is the way the Davises sled... nice ride up, fun sled down. Sure beats walking up the hill.Here is Chloe, gearing up for the big moment. That's right folks, she is finally one. Happy Birthday!

And also, Starring Ethan as Mr. Potato Head

To crawl or not to crawl... NOT to crawl

Just thought I'd share Chloe's funny scoot :) She doesn't just do this on the wood floor, she does it EVERYWHERE. The carpet all through our house, the grass... she's pretty good at what she does.

Steve's Attempt at Blogging

Hello all,
This is Steve, I decided to try my hand at blogging. :)














Here is Chloe getting ready to go for her first bike ride.














Ethan enjoying the carnival and fiesta days!














Chloe in all of her chubby cuteness.

Evil Eye or Blue Steel?

Chloe has the giggles!

City of Rocks and Rockin' Ethan

We decided to go on an adventure Saturday, so we made our way out the the City of Rocks. It was so beautiful, but cold and windy. We would go climb on some rocks, and then Ethan would get cold, so we'd spend some time warming up in the car, then we'd climb on more rocks. Ethan really liked the rocks :) Whenever I finish teaching piano lessons, Ethan wants me to sit in the chair while he has a turn playing the piano. This week he decided to sing and play. What a cutie.

Handy Husband and Little Boy Blue

I am SO excited about this quilting frame that Steve made for me that I just have to blog about it :) I needed a quilting frame, so I did some research online and found one that I liked called the Q-Snap, but it was WAY too expensive. So I showed it to Steve and asked him to make it for me for my anniversary present (four years, btw, and lovin' it) and so he drew up a little blue print and priced out all of the pieces and the cheapest places to get them, and built it for me. It can be really big like the picture below... or, if I am quilting by myself I can take a section out of it and have it be smaller and fit better in my house. You just clip the quilt onto the top and it keeps it nice and taught. And then when I'm all done it breaks down very small and fits under my bed. I can't wait to try it out, I have a project all ready to go on it! I just have to wait for Ethan to fall asleep so I can get it on without him pulling it off :) I am grateful for a very handy husband.

Here is a cute picture of Chloe from this week. She is such a good baby and always smiling and happy. She is starting to be too big for newborn clothes, which makes me a little sad that she is getting so big. Ethan is hilarious as always. He did the "why" game with me for the first time. We were getting ready to go out the door to run something down to Steve. I said, "Okay, Ethan, lets go get in the car." He said, "Why"

"Because we need to run some stuff down to dad."

"Why"

"Because he forgot it when he left for work and he needs it."

"Why"

"Because I said so! Now lets go get in the car."

"Okay"

What a silly boy... I have no idea where he learned the word "why" or how he learned to use it repeatedly! He is getting so big and independent and wants to do everything by himself. He says "Ethan do it, NO mama do it". Here is a video of him, he had just finished helping me with the dishes and got soaking wet, so we needed to change his clothes, but he didn't want me to help, so he is trying to put his pants on by himself... he only got one leg because he was distracted by the camera.

Here is a video of Ethan scarfing down blueberries that I thought was very cute.

It Runs in the Family

The "Grandpa Taylor Ear" as we've come to call it, has shown up in Chloe too. Both of our children have the floppy sticky ear syndrome. Steve and I got a good chuckle out of it. I guess the fact that she wouldn't hold still for the picture proves that she is our child as well. Something else that runs in the family is long fingers. Steve's are short and stubby, and mine aren't that long, but it's a Taylor gene that one of my sisters and at least one of my brothers has. It is hard to tell from the picture but Chloe has VERY long fingers (and also VERY large feet).

Another thing that runs in the family is cuteness... and here are some cute videos of the kids.

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).

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!

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.