President's Weekend

Eric's family came to visit for the long weekend!  We were so happy to have some visitors and we did a lot of fun stuff!  The first night we went out to eat and to the Recycled Percussion show. It was so fun! One of the best parts of the night was Eric jumping out of the car window at the car valet stop.  The poor suburban's front doors don't work anymore.  All of the climbing over seats and out of windows was good entertainment all weekend. On Saturday we went to Hoover Dam to see the new bridge.

 On the way home we stopped by the chocolate factory!

And on Sunday we went on a hike, and of course we had to stop by to see the donkeys. It was a great break for us, we LOVE visitors. (that is a hint)

Before and After

 Before the haircuts...

And after!

Lover's Day

For Valentine's we went on a date on Friday night because Monday was too busy. Our great friends, Jon and Linsi, watched Ethan.  I planned a "Choose Your Own Adventure" date, which turned out really fun!  I found the idea on the Dating Diva's website, it is really cute.  The date was like those old books where you got to choose what happened next.  I made lots of envelopes with poems on them for all of Eric's restaurant choices and he had to pick which one he wanted to go to by guessing from my poems. Then we did the same thing for our activity.  We also had car and restaurant tasks to be completed.  For example, we had to make someone in the car next to us laugh, and had to share our favorite memory with each other at dinner.  We ended up going to Cafe Rio first and then played glow in the dark mini golf at "King Putt"(clever eh?)  Afterwards we went to the new Cosmopolitan casino and looked around. It was so fancy!

On actual Valentine's day we went with Linsi to decorate the car that Eric and Jon drive to school in.  It was fun!

The rest of the weekend of love went great as well. We spent lots of time with this little guy...

... who also had a Valentine this year.  Nothing is better than young love!

Listening Ears

We have been doing more to involve Ethan in family home evenings.  I just always thought, "oh he is so young" so we didn't really include him.  In fact, a lot of our family nights pretty much consisted of watching Chuck and eating ice cream.  But the last few weeks we have done such fun things for family night. I have been using the nursery manual and a few weeks ago we did a lesson on temples, because Ethan loves temples.  He still has the temple that he colored up in his room and he is so proud of it. When I brought the nursery manual and the crayons downstairs this week Ethan got all excited and pointed over to it and said "Jesus!" I think he is catching on. This week we did a lesson on having listening ears.  We played a game where Eric and Ethan would run and then when I said stop, they had to stop.  We sang some songs and we made these listening ear headbands.  Ethan made sure that all of us wore them until it was time to go to sleep. I'm happy that he enjoys family night so much now!

"Baby-Show-Basket"

I carried Ethan downstairs in the laundry basket the other day with some clothes in it.  When we got downstairs I set the basket in the family room.  Ethan started saying "baby, show, basket." He said it over and over until I finally caught on that he wanted to watch a show in the basket. He always refers to himself as baby.  He demanded a pillow and a blanket and then he sat there and watched his show for quite a while (probably like 10 minutes, but that is very long for him) then he was off to make his next mess!  He really loves making messes.  But, I was so happy when my friend who is in nursery told me that Ethan picked up all of the toys in nursery on Sunday.  She said he was the only one and that he was so cute and made sure that every toy was put away. I was so proud of him!

Superbowl

We had a little party at our house for the superbowl. We had all of Eric's friends from the law school and their wives over.  It was so much fun!  We had a full house, but it turned out great. We celebrated James' birthday, ate tons of great food, played games, and just had a ton of fun.  Ethan also had fun, he climbed up on the table and discovered the treats ... all by himself!

Pre-School!

I started a little pre-school with my friend Linsi. We are having so much fun. We only have a couple kids right now, but it is still a blast. I love helping kids learn. I miss teaching so much and this is really filling that void for me.

Ethan, of course loves to get in on the action.  He thinks that he has to do everything the big kids do. It is pretty cute. He is learning a lot in the process!

"Watch This!"

Yesterday, Ethan's saying of the day was,"Watch this!"  He said it over and over as he proceeded to do things like dive head first over the couch (we have a chest behind the couch that he uses to propel himself off of).  He also said "Watch this Mama!" as he walked up the stairs, holding on to the railing.  This is big since I have forced him to crawl up the stairs until this point in his life.  He is getting so smart.  He talks so much!  I can't believe that soon my baby will be two!  It makes me a little sad!