"Scary Monsters"

Emma and TJ both are in very fun stages of life and I love to see Emma learning and growing up but TJ is in a stage right now that cracks me up. He makes me laugh constantly with the little things he does all the time. Here is a cute picture I took of him the other day. He LOVES the movie Monsters Inc. and cries for me to turn it on all the time. The funny thing is, when I do turn it on, he covers his eyes for the first ten minutes of the movie saying, "scary monsters" over and over again....go figure.

Terrible two's!!!

TJ just turned two on the 17th!!! I am so excited to see him growing and learning new things but I have to say I am not looking forward to his little attitude I can see developing. He has been throwing little temper tantrums for a while and for now it just makes me laugh when he makes little fists with his hands and kicks stuff and grunts until his face turns red, but I know it won't be funny forever. He is such a sweetheart most of the time though and has just recently gotten in the habit of randomly giving everyone big hugs and kisses and telling them he loves them so much. He is also usually very concerned if anyone is upset. He asks "what happened" in a very sweet tone over and over until someone answers him. He is also getting to be quite the little copy cat mimmicking everything his big sister does. He is usually very happy, especially in the morning, almost every morning he comes out of his room with a big smile and says, "sleep good". He has also picked up a very cute habit from his daddy. Anyone who knows Jared knows he loves to play with hair, well so does TJ. He will often play with my hair and tell me how soft and pretty it is. Here are a few pictures from his birthday of him and Jared "playing ball" with his new basketball hoop. He has always loved balls and often practices making baskets in the basket his toys go in. He was very excited about his new present and did suprisingly well with his new hoop. It was fun to see him play and hear him say, "nice shot daddy" whenever Jared would make a basket. Emma was sweet to TJ on his birthday letting him be first with everything when she usually throws a pretty big fit if she is not first, and even though TJ scared me half to death when he did a somersault out of the cart at Target, it turned out to be a pretty good day. Here is a picture of T's eye after his little fall. It doesn't look as bad in the picture as it did in real life but it definitely could have been worse.
He later fugured out if he put the chair under the basket he could make it every time...smart kid.

Blessing Day

We were able to bless Rees last week, Jared gave her a beautiful blessing and we got together with friends and family after the meeting. I am so grateful for a worthy priesthood holder for a husband!!! Here is a couple pictures of the blessing girl. My mom has created a fun tradition of making blessing dresses for all of her grandaughters. She was nice enough to let me help with some of the embroidery which was fun. I love that they will have their beautiful dresses to help them remember their grandma and see the talents she had.

Merry Christmas!

Christmas was so much fun this year! Emma and TJ were so excited about the whole idea of Santa and his reindeer coming. Emma brought home some reindeer dust (glitter) from pre-school this year. The idea is right before you go to bed on Christmas Eve you throw the reindeer dust outside on the snow so the reindeer will see it shining, get curious, and when they stop to check it out Santa leaves you presents. You have to hurry and go to sleep or the reindeer won't come though. It was so funny to see her throw the glitter and run upstairs as fast as she could to get into bed. The only problem was we forgot to put out milk and cookies for Santa before we threw the reindeer dust. So she ran downstairs again, made sure we got the cookies and a big glass of milk, and ran back upstairs. I wish it was so easy to get her to go to sleep every night.

TJ got this football and spider man ball in his stocking, which he opened first, and didn't want to open any more presents. I wish I would have known that is all he would want.













Giving hugs for the gifts they picked out for eachother.

This is a picture of TJ asking if he could pleeeease open his race car track. Who could say no to those big blue eyes?

We always go to my parents house Christmas morning to open the gifts they got for us. Here is TJ cuddling Grandpa with his new blanket.

The kids got new storybooks for Christmas so we settled down with their new blankies and read a story before bedtime. As you can see, Rees wasn't too happy about the whole idea.

Santa Dean

Our neighbor has dressed up as Santa for the last couple of years and come to our house with little gifts for us and our kids. Although Emma was a little confused at why Santa came to our house before Christmas, she was very excited and glad Santa told her she was on the "nice list". After his little visit, if Emma was being naughty I would tell her Santa was watching to make sure she was being nice and she would tell me he already told her she was on the nice list so it was ok. TJ was a little nervous until Santa gave him a little nerf football, he warmed up to him quickly after that.








Jared and I were lucky enough to sit on Santa's lap too!