Christmas

Christmas was really fun this year. JR is finally old enough to start to understand about Santa. He was so excited on Christmas Eve, thinking that he was actually going to see Santa. However, if you asked him what Santa was going to bring him for Christmas he always said, "nothing". Here are some pictures from our day.

Christmas Eve, the boys in their Christmas PJs.

The tree being overwhelmed with all the gifts. It took us a few hours to open these gifts, we even took a break to have breakfast.

What Santa brought.

Random pics

Christmas Card

Christmas Letter

December 2009

Dear Family and Friends,

The end of the year is here again, and all I can really think of his how fast it went by. I have gotten so caught up in our day-to-day busy lives that I am afraid I am having trouble remembering everything that may be noteworthy to put in our Christmas letter. I can remember the significant things that have happened this past year (such as the birth of our second son), however everything runs together so I hope that you can follow my ramblings as I attempt to write it all down.

The year began with us thrilled to find out we were expecting another boy. Andrew arrived in June, a week and a day earlier than expected. He is currently a very busy 6 month old, who just cut his first tooth. He wants so bad to be mobile and we fear he may learn to crawl before Christmas. He adores his big brother and loves to watch him play. He even tolerates it when JR "accidently" knocks him down. Andrew has an adorable laugh and we all love spending time making him giggle. His sweet spirit has brought a lot of joy in our home.

Jonathan continues to be a busy kid who keeps us both on our toes. He loves being a big brother and gives AJ hugs all the time. JR is growing up so fast and is learning things so quickly. He knows his alphabet, numbers, colors and shapes, and loves to dance and sing as well as pretend to play any sport you can think of. Jonathan also likes to play with his construction trucks and pretends his bike is a garbage truck or mail truck. It is so fun to watch his imagination work. We are so blessed to have him in our family.

Lynda continues to work part time at the Blindness and Low Vision Center. She was promoted to a professional level job at the beginning of year. She coordinates the accessible materials for the center. Although she enjoys the people she is working with, she is looking forward to when she can quit and be home with the boys full time. Lynda continues to teach seminary and is enjoying teaching the Book of Mormon this year. Although it takes up a lot of spare time to prepare lessons, it is wonderful to study the scriptures on a daily basis with the youth in our ward. This calling has brought us a lot of joy and blessings regardless of the lack of sleep.

Mike keeps himself busy writing his dissertation. He has completed his first draft and is in the revision process. He hopes to be able to defend this spring. If all goes according to schedule he will graduate in the summer. In anticipation of this he has begun looking for employment. So far he has applied for several jobs, but apparently a lot of other people are also applying to those same jobs. We pray that he will find a job that will be a good fit for our family no matter where that will take us. Mike was released from his calling in the Young Men and called to serve as the Ward Mission Leader. He “enjoyed” that calling for two months and then was released and called to be the 2^nd counselor in the bishopric. Although this is also a very time-consuming calling it has blessed our family already and we know it will continue to bless us as he serves.

You can read more about our day-to-day lives at http://jrandaj.blogspot.com. We hope this holiday season finds you happy and well. We are filled with gratitude as the holidays approach us. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.

Love, Mike, Lynda, Jonathan & Andrew

Family Prayer

I needed to post this so that I don't forget later. JR is getting really good at saying prayers. Sometimes he wants help, but a lot of time he wants to do it all by himself. This morning he said the family prayer and it was a very good prayer. It is so cute how he really tries to think of what to say in the prayer. I found it so cute that he blessed Handy Manny, the tools, Mr. Lopart and the Monster Cookie this morning. If that is confusing to you, it is probably because you have never seen the cartoon show Handy Manny. But even if you have seen the show, you might not know what the Monster Cookie refers too. In the episode we were watching this morning, Mr. Lopart was dressed up as a gingerbread man, and I guess to JR, he looked like a Monster Cookie. It is so cute to see how his mind works. There were several times in the prayer this morning that he would pause and so Mike tried to prompt him to say something, and he would say to his daddy, "no, I'm saying the prayer". He is growing up way too fast.

One last thing to post about, AJ got his first tooth the other day. His second one is ready to pop through any day now. I can't believe he is already 6 months old. Time just flies by.

Halloween

Here it is almost Thanksgiving and I haven't had a chance to post about Halloween yet. We had ward party on Halloween, so we did trunk or treat and dressed up the boys. It was a fun night. Here are some pics.

Jonathan was a construction worker. Here he is all dressed up.

Andrew was a pumpkin. Isn't he cute. We borrowed this costume from a friend and it worked great.

JR all ready to go get some candy.

AJ eyeing the candy.

AJ grabbing the candy.

Carving the pumpkin. JR picked out the design of the moon and stars and was so excited to cut the pumpkin. But he did not like cleaning the pumpkin, is was just too messy for him. He hates for his hands to feel dirty.

The finished product.

JR so proud of our pumpkin.

Sitting up

AJ has been sitting up for a little while now, but he has recently become a pro at it, where he can do it for quite a while without toppling over. I love this stage when he can sit and play with some toys. Here are a few pics of him sitting up.

AJ is also getting so big. I took him to the dr. yesterday to make sure he didn't have an ear infection and he weighed 18 lbs. No wonder my arms are killing me after holding him for awhile. We have started to feed him solids and he loves it. So far everything that we have given him he has liked. He will usually get mad if we are eating and he is not and is constantly reaching for food on our plates. It really is crazy how fast they grow.

A couple of cute pics

I really wanted to get some professional shots done of AJ and of both AJ and JR together, but really can't afford it. So one day I played around with my camera to try to get some cute shots that we could get 8x10 of, to have something to hang on our wall.

I got this pic of AJ, which I really like and it is now hanging on our wall.



This is a pic I got of both the boys and I think it turned out really cute. It is really hard to get a good picture of them together. Unfortunately the quality of the pic really isn't that good, so it doesn't look good as a big pic. So I still need to get a pic of them together to hang on our wall.

Big boy bed

I started this post a while back and never got around to finishing it. We finally got a big boy bed for JR. Its a Cars bed, and he loves it. We still have the crib set up in the room as well, and hopefully soon we will be moving AJ in there and out of our room. JR has done awesome in his big boy bed. I was afraid he would get up a lot during the night, but once he is in there he stays in there. I'm not sure that will always be the case, but for now it is. He calls it a "boy bed" because we always say "big boy bed" and he leaves off the "big"

Here are a few pics from the day we set it up and before he took a nap.

Time

I have about a bajillion posts in my head, but I never have time to write them out. When I finally do have a little bit of time, I can't remember all of them. I will get to them eventually, but my time seems so stretched these days, there are so many things I do not get to do. For example, I love to scrapbook, however it has been forever since I last did it. I have an album for JR. It is going to be his baby book and document his first year of life. I have all the pictures I want to include in it printed, but that is all I have been able to do. Now I need to purchase a book for AJ and eventually get started on his as well. I just never have the time. Where is all this time going. Well I thought I would update here about our currently busy life of our family at the moment. I know I use this blog to mostly talk about the boys, but there might be some of you out there that might want to hear about Mike and I as well.

If you don't know, I work part time and Mike is a PhD student. I like my job, I work with very nice people, and I really do enjoy what I am doing, but I would much rather be a stay at home mom. While Mike is still in school that is just not possible. I am grateful that I only work part time, however I was recently promoted to a professional level in the same department I was working. I received a raise which is always good, however it really changed my position into a full time job. Which basically means I am try to squeeze 40 hours of work into 20 hours. Let just say it is difficult. Mike, is currently working on his dissertation, which is great. It means he is almost finished. But this also means that he needs time to write. He also has a teaching assistantship, which means he is teaching a college class. And currently he is applying for jobs for next fall. Oh did I mention that I also teach early morning seminary and Mike is in the bishopric.

So basically we are busy. I am not complaining, I know there are many people out there that are a lot busier than us, but I will be glad when this stage of our life is over, but I am sure there are many things that will always keep us busy, no matter what stage of our lives we are in.

Talking about the next stage of our life. Mike is started to apply for jobs next fall. He is planning to be finished with his PhD next Summer. So now is the time to start looking. Its really fun to think about where we might end up, but it also has us worried about how difficult it might be for him to get a job. There are actually several jobs that he is qualified for, so he is going to apply to them all, but whether or not any job offers come from any of it, is hard to say. We always thought we would end up somewhere in the south, since Mike is a southern historian, however there is not many jobs in the south. Because I know some people might be curious I will mention here where some of the jobs are. There are many people that might be very happy (including me) if we ended up back in Utah, and surprisingly there are 3 jobs he is applying to in Utah. But that does not mean we will end up back there, it still is so hard to tell how things will play out. Some of the other places he is applying at are Pennsylvania (there are 3 jobs there as well), Idaho, Illinois, Ohio, Massachusetts, and Tennessee (the only one in the south). I am rooting for any in Utah or the the one in Idaho, even though I'm not sure I can stand the cold in Idaho, just because it means we will be closer to family. However, wherever he gets an offer and is a good fit for our family, I will be happy. I will really miss Mississippi, the ward and the friends we have here especially, but I am ready for this next stage of our lives to begin.

Hair

Sunday mornings can be busy as I try to get two little boys and myself ready for church. One morning I found JR in the bathroom, brushing his own hair. When I brush his hair I usually wet his hair just a little so that I can get it to stay down after he has been sleeping on it. His whole head was dripping wet, LOL. He said "Mommy, I brushing my hair". Of course I had to take a picture.

Socks

JR has a fascination with socks right now. I think he likes the fact that he can put them on and take them off all by himself. He also likes to call them gloves and put them on his hands. One day I was going to take him to the store with me and I told him to go get his shoes on. This is what he did to get ready.


As cute as he looked with his socks pulled up to his knees and wearing crocs, Mike would never let him go out in public like that, hehe. But he was so proud of himself. He loves to do things all by himself.

Making pizza

Mike is the chef in our home. He always makes dinner, and JR loves to cook as well. If Mike is in the kitchen cooking, JR is watching or helping some how. One night we decided to make home made pizza and Mike let JR help. He has a blast making his very own pizza.

Here is the result.

We have a thumb sucker!

Trip to SL

We just got back from a wonderful trip to SL to visit family. It was really fun, however it was hard to fit everything in that we wanted to do. It just doesn't seem like there is ever enough time. The weather was wonderful, so we spent a lot of time outside. We were also able to see a few old friends as well. I took around 200 pics, so I'm not going to try to post them all here. I will post a few here and you can view more of them here.

We don't have stairs, so JR loved going up and down the stairs at Grandpa/ma G's house.



Cousins



Eating a popsicle



Cousins



Jumping on the tramp. I think this was JR's favorite thing to do.


Mike, Drew, and Charlie (old friends from school)




Charlie's family



Drew's family


The Bloods and us (friends from Mississippi who moved to Utah)

Smiles

AJ is a very smiley baby, so I wanted post as many pics that I can of his adorable smile.

The first smile I ever captured on camera.


Smiling at himself in the mirror.


Little grins, he loves to stick out his tongue.








Big chubby grin. This one is my favorite.


If only JR was smiling cute in this one, this picture would have been perfect.


A couple of JR because he has such a cute smile too.

Big cheesy grin, but I love AJ's expression in this one too.


My cute big boy.