December Advent

So tearing a page out of my friend Laura’s playbook again, I took on the December advent calendar of activities this year. It has been a fun thing for us and we look forward to our activity everyday. It is really fun watching Owen be so excited about Christmas this year. Each day we write what we did on a card, and put it in the advent calendar pocket.
Here are a few highlights of our advent this year...

Decorating the House:

Buying Gifts for Friends/Family and then Wrapping Presents:

Making Ornaments (various days):

Christmas Party:
We love having our little friends over for a cookie and ornament decorating party. Sadly, this year there were no pictures... sigh. But I did snap this shot of the kids the night before helping me bake all the cookies.

Owen’s Tree: the second photo was taken by Owen. And Olivia’s Tree

Nativity: we have a tiny nativity for the kids and we let them arrange and rearrange it to their hearts content.

Christmas Puppets: there were lots of crafts this year, which we love. I even have a dedicated Christmas craft bucket. :)

Making Snowflakes: he did the folding, I did the cutting.

Picking out New Ornaments: Rudolph was Owen’s pick and “chicken” was Olivia’s.

Live Nativity: our annual Christmas Eve tradition at the Puzeys.

Reading Christmas Stories:

Matching PJs:

Pictures with Santa: Owen told Santa he wanted an “awesome marble track” for Christmas, and Olivia just stared.

Owen’s Christmas List:
next year I am going to send it to Santa. This year he didn’t want to, but I found Santa’s address: 1 Santa Claus Lane  North Pole, AK 

Utah

This Christmas one of the things I was grateful for was Utah. Not just because we got to go and visit our family there, but also because Owen has been asking me every day in December when it is going to snow. In every Christmas book and movie there is snow, and he was just waiting for it to appear here, in Atlanta. Poor kid. So if it doesn’t snow at your house, going to Nana and Papa’s house where it DOES snow is great!
We headed to Utah on the 26th and celebrated Christmas with the Andersons. We had great fun and were able to spend time with Nate’s parents, all of his siblings, and Sarah and Andrew. :) We had a great time and loved seeing everyone.
















Owen and Olivia were THRILLED that there were more gifts to be opened and Owen had a great time playing in Nana and Papa’s back yard in the snow with his cousins Emma and Gavin. I honestly didn’t know if he would last 10 minutes out there in the cold, but he played for about an hour each time! I had to buy hats and gloves for the kids for Christmas (since we don’t use them a whole lot here in Georgia) and they only had rain boots or running shoes to wear. I didn’t have any snow pants. Honestly I am amazed he lasted to long out there! But he had a great time and there was always a cup of hot cocoa with marshmallows to be had once inside from the cold. :)











































We were also lucky enough to celebrate Elanore’s birthday while were were visiting Utah. She turned 2 years old on the 30th! Happy Birthday Ella! :)














We went to visit Temple Square and see all the lights. I am amazed at how wimpy I have become in the cold, but we were out there for about 45 minutes in the snow. Not bad. :)
Thanks Andersons for your generosity and for all the good memories!

Merry Christmas

This Christmas was a LOT of fun. We had a fun December with our daily advent activities, and on Christmas Eve we headed up to the Puzeys to celebrate! We had our traditional dinner of Autumn Chowder and Spinach Salad with our favorite treats for dessert. The kids performed the Nativity for us again, under Morgan’s direction. Great job Morgan! :)

















Doug read the kids some Christmas Stories before bed.












We got our kids bundled up in matching Christmas PJs and in bed and then finished some last minute wrapping.













We woke up on Christmas morning and had a lot of fun opening presents! Santa brought Owen an “awesome marble track” per his specific request, and Olivia got a baby doll. It was so much fun to see everyone enjoy their gifts and play with them all day on Christmas. Everyone wore their new clothes and we made Ebelskivers and Norweigan pancakes for breakfast. I love Christmas day!

Chicken

While Christmas shopping this year Olivia disappeared down one of the bedding aisles and reappeared clutching this little stuffed penguin in her arms. She brought it to me exclaiming, “Chicken!” as she walked back towards me. I thought it was so cute that I bought it and then gave it to her for Christmas. She is still just as thrilled every time she sees “Chicken” and it is her new favorite thing to snuggle with when going to sleep. We have since discovered that anything with an orange beak is a “Chicken” in Olivia’s world. She has snuggled the orange beak right off his little face. :)
When we went shopping for Christmas ornaments with the kids at target, amazingly, they had a “Chicken” ornament, which you can check out here. For obvious reasons, she was drawn to the ornament and we bought it for her this year.
We love “Chicken”!

Thanksgiving

Here is one of our two attempts at Christmas card photos this year. I am beginning the realize the miracle of a family photo where everyone is smiling and looking at the camera. :)

Can you just see in his smile how much fun he had at Chuck E Cheese that day? I love this picture. Somehow, Chuck was able to capture pure childhood wonder and joy. Thanks Mr. Cheese.

Happy Halloween

This year for halloween we decided to go traditional with our costumes: Owen was a Skeleton and Olivia was a witch. I, of course, did not take one picture of the two of them together. Brilliant Mother than I am. :) We did have a fabulous time, however and thoroughly enjoyed watching our kids have fun. Nate and I sort-of dressed up. I wore a witches hat and he wore his operation T shirt:

with a red clown nose. Sorry, no pictures of us either.
We carved pumpkins and spent a solid hour carving that skeleton (Owen’s pick). After that, we let him draw on the pumpkins and then cut out his drawings to make 2 more jack-o-lanterns. I think they turned out pretty good.
We had a great time at the ward trunk-or-treat and then we headed up to the Puzeys for some old school door to door trick-or-treating fun. Owen and Kate and the other little neighbor kids went running from door to door. They are all about the same age, and it was cute to watch the little pack of them go. Olivia wanted to walk the entire way as well, which left her and I (or her and Nate...as we took turns) lagging behind the group. She did get to toddle her way up to a few doors and say trick-or-treat, which she really loved. She wants to do everything Owen is doing these days.
We went back to Puzey’s for a movie and some serious candy counting. It was really cute.
We had a Happy Halloween and hope yours was too! :)

Trip to Washington

We took our annual fall pilgrimage to the northwest again this year, visiting my family. We always make sure to go to Gordon’s pumpkin patch and we always have a great time. Here are some of this year’s pics. To see last year’s pics look here.

Gordon’s also has an apple orchard, so we (after Karen pointed it out to us) took a few more pictures...

Another favorite stop is Christensen’s Nursery. They have beautiful plants and a really cute home boutique to boot! This year we went out back and found an old school house and some farm animals too. It was a fun place to wander around with the kids.

We also stopped by to visit Grandma and Grandpa at the Bishop’s storehouse. They serve there during the week and we took the kids by to say hello. They got to ride on carts and Owen and Grandpa even got a ride on the forklift! We love to visit Grandma and Grandpa. :)
Sorry...all I had was a phone picture...

We also like to take a few days to stay at Slesk Orchard and Gardens. This year Jamie hosted Octoberfest again and much fun was had. We started the kids off with some sugar cookie decorating. Then they each got to make a ghost costume before heading out on a “ghosts and goblin’s scavenger hunt” that ended with a pinata! They LOVED it. Then we took them to the pumpkin patch where they rode in the tractor cars and this year the owner had a trebuchet. I hadn’t ever heard of one before, but it is somewhat like a catapult. He launched pumpkins into the sky and over the patch into the next field where they exploded. It was a big hit! Nate took some video, but I don’t know how to put video on my site yet, so you can look up pumpkin trebuchet on youtube and find some videos of just what it looked like. It was a lot of fun.
We made some apple cider, and it is oh so delicious when it is that fresh. YUMMM!
They guys built a lean-to on Jamie’s garden shed and also had a hatchet throwing contest. You know... man stuff. A good time was had by all.

Pumpkin Patch

We set out for a really cute pumpkin patch, and ended up in the wrong place. Luckily we found a cute church with a lawn full of pumpkins where we could snap a few fall pictures of the kids and buy our pumpkins too.

Botanical Garden

We had a fun day at the Botanical Garden a few weeks ago with Lori and Reagan. We had never been before but the kids and I loved it! The flowers were beautiful and it is fun to let the kids run around and play outside. They also had hundreds of scarecrows up for the holiday season, which was fun to see. We had a great time. Thanks for letting us tag along, Lori! :)

Pink Tutu

Please indulge me... Buying pink tutus is one of the great things I get to do because I have a little girl...

Olivia LOVES her little girly toys. She loves her tutu and her purses, her jewelry and her sunglasses and hair pretties... and I LOVE that about her.

Happy Birthday Nate!

Today was Nate’s birthday! Happy Birthday Sweets :) Nate found a really great last-minute deal on U2 tickets and we decided to go for it. It was really fun! (That’s Bono on the screen above.) Pretty sweet way to celebrate your birthday if you ask me.

Words

This is one of our favorite toys and it is used almost daily. I love it. Owen spells words by himself and Olivia dances around to the tune of the ABCs.

Owen's 4th Birthday

How is this happening so quickly. My little baby boy is growing so fast and is not so little anymore! We celebrated birthday number 4 this year, and it was really fun. He was very specific this year in his requests. Case in point: he wanted a round cake, with blue frosting, sprinkles and balloon candles. So my cute neighbor made him a cake to his 4 year old specifications. It was really cute, and of course none of the pictures of her cake turned out...
We celebrated by having his little friends meet us at the Jumpin’ Jamboree so the kids could play and jump to their little hearts’ content. It was great fun and Owen loves to look at the pictures we too of that day.
That night we had cupcakes after dinner and opened his presents. It was a great day to be Owen. He is already planning his next birthday. The following Sunday we celebrated Cheryl and Owen’s birthdays and after this (second) party Owen asked if he was 5 now. :)
I love my little man and I’m so grateful to be his mommy.

This year for Owen’s birthday Thank You cards I had him draw a little picture of the gift on the front of the card. I just love to watch him draw and see what his mind sees. Here are a few of the cards that I thought were just too cute. 

Johannesen Girls Beach Weekend

This year my mom, 2 of my sisters, 1 of my nieces and I went on a weekend road trip down to the beach! We had a great time and (again) I enjoyed myself so much I couldn’t be bothered to take out my camera. That is really a fatal flaw when it comes to blogging... but such it is.
I did manage to swipe a few pictures from my sister Kristen’s camera though.
We talked, we shopped, went to movies, got pedicures, made cookies, and soaked up some sun. It was great fun and I love hanging out with my Johannesen Girls. :)

Maddio's

If you know us, then you know we love pizza. I didn’t love pizza until I loved Nate. Now I love Nate & I love pizza. Nate has been doing ads for a new pizza place in town called Maddio’s and it just so happens that we love their pizza too.
One day Nate needed some pictures of kids eating pizza for their “kids eat free” emails, so we tried taking our kids down there to snap some shots. You can see how they turned out. Funny, but...well not quite what he needed.

Sandwich

As you know, Nate loves Tshirts. He found this one for Owen at threadless. If you ask him what it says, he’ll tell you:
“If you can read this, make me into a sandwich.”

iLaugh

We made a trip to the apple store a while ago to pick something up and while Nate was talking to the sales person, the kids and I sat down at the kid’s computer station and had fun. I took these (lousy) pictures with my phone, but it gave me a chuckle to see them each sitting at their own computer. Olivia would NOT be moved from her little desk when we were finished.

Trip to Utah

Another highlight of the trip to Utah was visiting Logan and seeing Becky & Jason’s home. They have done some MAJOR remodeling and it was really fun to see all their progress. It looks amazing! We went for a hike around Tony (?) Lake. The kids loved it and it was fun to hike and splash and explore.

While in SLC we took a family pictures with all of Nate’s siblings and their kids. It was fun being able to see everyone and to have our kids play with their cousins.
Olivia loved playing with her little cousin Elanore and she still wanders around the house saying “Ella” sometimes. It was fun to watch them all play together and have fun. :) Too cute!

Barry & Krissie's Wedding

We were able to fly out to Utah this August for Barry & Krissie’s wedding. It was so fun to see everyone and so fun to go to a wedding.  The Sealing was beautiful. It is so much fun to go to someone else’s sealing, because you are actually aware of what is going on. :)
The reception was so, so cute. Their colors were bright and vibrant and it all came together beautifully. I wish I had a picture of everything. Congrats Barry & Krissie! We love you!

Kate's End of Chemo Party

To celebrate the end of Kate’s journey with Chemotherapy and Leukemia, the Hansen’s had an end-of-chemo celebration for her. It was so much fun and so sweet. None of my pictures turned out, except for this one, and one of Owen and Ava.
Jason and Carolyn each talked for a while about what it has been like for their family and then they gave Kate a necklace as a gift. It had a charm with her diagnosis date, one with the date of her last chemotherapy, and a charm that said survivor. What a strong, brave little girl. We love you Kate!

Crafting

Owen loves to do crafts and when I see the Martha Stewart crafts on clearance at Walmart, I buy a bunch for rainy days. This one was fun. We made animals out of balloons and had them all sitting up at the bar in our kitchen for a few days, just watching us. Then we decided to take them off of their little shrine and play with them...and they popped. :( But they did provide for us several hours of entertainment and hands-on fun, and well worth the $3.97 I spent.

With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility

Hulk hands. The Puzeys gave us their awesome Hulk Hands and we had a lot of fun with them...until my kids started taking bites out of them (sigh). My favorite is when Olivia has them on, because it is almost just a torso with Hulk Hands. I had to snap a few quick pics between giggling at my silly kids.

Happy Birthday to Mom

This year I had a great birthday. That morning Nate took me to the running shoe store and I got a pair of running shoes! It was one of those stores where they evaluate how you run by putting you on a treadmill. Before we started on the treadmill, the guy asked if I had ever used a treadmill before and did I need any help getting started. I waved my hand and told him of course I knew how. Then I just about ate it as I started up the treadmill. It was so awesomely bad that I had to reassure him I could handle it. So...great start! :) But I got a new pair of shoes.
Next we promptly headed over to Alon’s for my slice of birthday cake. I just bought one slice, since Cheryl was going to make me an awesome cake (pictured above).
The afternoon was spent hanging out with my family and that night after dinner I opened up a few presents. It was perfect.
On Sunday we headed up to the Puzey’s for Sunday dinner and a family party for me. When I arrived there was a tiara waiting for me and a big sign out front that read: “Happy Birthday Princess Allison”
We ate a yummy dinner (Burgers...one of my favorites) and then Cheryl pulled out this amazing cake! The recipe is here and you will only make it once...it is so rich my head is still spinning every time I think of it. But it was so, so good! And for heaven sakes, look how cute it is.
It was a great birthday.

4th of July

Happy (belated) Independence Day! This year we had the chance to wake up early and head down to the Dunwoody 4th of July Parade. Olivia stayed in the Baby Bjorn, and just stared in shock at everything. Owen had a GREAT time: firetrucks, police cars, floats, marching bands, school teams, clowns...and they all throw candy at you! This is a 3 year old definition of a good time. :) I love parades too. Make fun if you will, but I have a secret dream to go to NYC to see the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade in person one day. I still watch it every year.
After the parade we gave everyone a nap and then headed to the Hinckley’s house for a BBQ and fireworks show. The kids got to do the sparklers, which Owen always approaches with anticipation and GREAT concern simultaneously. Then Mark put on a show for the kids when it was dark enough. They loved it! Owen always asks when we can do that again!

Berry Picking

I love to go pick berries with my kids. It is definitely a messy process, but it is hilarious to watch them plant their little rear ends down and munch on berries while I do all the work. Just like last year. It’s the way it’s supposed to be, if you’ve ever read Blueberries for Sal (one of our favorite books). We went a few times this year, once for strawberries (to make freezer jam), and then once for blueberries (for muffins) and raspberries (for freezer jam). All of those things make me really happy. In fact, I found the BEST blueberry muffin recipe. I posted it here. Unfortunately, I didn’t take many pictures this year, but my berry picking friend,  Kris sent me this one (above). Thanks Kris!

Mother's Day

I feel so blessed.

California Trip

We recently flew out to California for a reunion with Nate’s parents and siblings. We had a great time. Here are some of the family pictures we took at the beach with the whole clan.

Part of our fun in California was a day at Disneyland. So. Much. Fun. I love Disney. Owen loved almost every minute of it. You can see below that he found the meeting the characters to be a wee bit overwhelming. Olivia, on the other hand ONLY liked It’s a Small World, and the ice cream. So here are a few pictures of our day at Disneyland.

Artist

Owen LOVES to do crafts and projects. And I LOVE to clean up after them. :) This particular piece was done on a Saturday morning. We were flying out that evening to California, and he had a Primary Activity that afternoon. It was a busy day, but a fun one. He used a favorite technique here, which is splattering paint. Very artistic, and very messy. I love how it turned out though and I also had to post a picture of the rag I used to clean it up. We’ll call it MY creative process. It made me laugh. Of course, a piece of art this messy has to be done in underpants. It’s just the way it is. :) Afterwards, when I put him in the bathtub, (he left little colorful footprints all the way there) I was cleaning paint out of his hair, in his ears, off his feet and he even had it on his back too.

Matching Aprons

Honestly. How was I to help myself when I found these at Anthropologie?

Easter

This year we had a neighborhood easter party on Saturday, hosted by the Links. They had an easter egg hunt, and the easter bunny appeared (my kids did not want to touch that life-sized bunny with a 10 foot pole!), and a yummy lunch (coconut bunny cake and all).

The next morning we let them open their easter baskets. This was the first time Olivia really enjoyed Easter. If you recall last year, she cried most of the time... After church we had an easter dinner at the Puzey’s house with some friends. Cheryl and I are trying to come up with our favorite (perfected over time) holiday meals. This time we tried Salmon again, and it turned out really well. I love making traditions and this easter was wonderful.

I love easter and the opportunity we have to focus on hope. Hope through the Savior’s atonement. I feel blessed to have the gospel and my family encouraging me each day, especially on easter.

Florida

We spent Spring Break ’09 at the Beach in Florida with the Puzey family this year and we had a blast. There is something about watching my kids play at the beach that makes me feel like a good parent. Similar to the feeling I get when my kids are sleeping. I am amazed at how busy kids are at the beach. They are constantly running from one project to the next: digging a hole, filling the hole with ocean water. digging another hole, building sand castles, burying each other in the sand, digging yet another hole. It was great. We also spent time at the pool (see below). Olivia stayed mostly in the shade, on a chair, which she really enjoyed (the sand was not her favorite...).  I love the beach.

One of my favorite things to do at the beach is to take family pictures. We have some up in our front room right now that we took almost THREE years ago ... time to update. Poor Olivia wasn’t even in the pictures ...
Here are this year’s batch, taken by our favorite Uncle Doug.

Bathtime

Just a few recent bath time pictures I thought I would share...

Snow Day

In the six years Nate and I have lived here in Atlanta, it has snowed a grand total of 3 times. This Sunday was the 3rd, and the most snow we’ve seen here (3 inches!). Owen immediately asked me where his snow pants were (ummmm....) and within 10 minutes of it starting to snow, Owen asked if we could:

1. build a snowman
2. throw snowballs
3. go sledding
4. make snow angels

We had to be a little bit patient, but we did go outside and throw snowballs and build a micro snowman (we don’t own any sleds, naturally).
We had a great time!

Another nice thing about a snow day ...is snuggling. And Olivia is great at that. She and I bundled up on the couch (our electricity went out for about an hour) with blankets. Owen was unaffected by the cold, and wanted to wear his new favorite outfit (underwear only...sometimes a shirt too) and go chugging. I love that he lays down and watches his trains go by.

A Good Day

Last week we had one of those days that you know is a gift. I don’t know why (and wish I could figure out how to replicate it) but everyone was in a good mood, got a good night’s sleep, took naps, played fair, was patient (that’s me...), and had a fun day.

The day started by us hosting our preschool group. I found all the children to be particularly cute and fun that day and we had a great time talking about the letter V. Owen has this little joke that makes Nate and I laugh. Over Christmas, he picked up a Christmas card someone had sent to us and pretended to read it, saying, “Dear Christmas tree, I love you soooooo much!” That made us laugh hard, so now he says it anytime he wants to get a good laugh out of us. He was in a giddy mood, having everyone at his house for preschool and decided to elevate the fun in the room even more with his little joke. I could see in his little mind him thinking, “they are going to LOVE this”. They, naturally, didn’t get the joke, but he still laughed his cute little giddy laugh. That made me giggle...it still does just writing this down.

The kids napped in shifts that day, which was nice because I was able to spend time playing with both of them individually. Olivia is really developing her little personality. She is really a sweet and pleasant little thing, unless of course you are eating something she wants to try, or you wrong her in some way and then she will let you know in no uncertain terms. It is really fun to watch her play with Owen. When he woke up we played in the playroom together and I just sat there watching them giggle. 

Olivia needed a nap, so we put her down and Owen and I headed out to the back yard to play baseball. Today I taught him how to run all the bases. We set them up and every time he hit the ball was a home run! The crowd went WILD. (Insert Billy’s crowd going wild cheer here). I am not the best pitcher, so every time I threw poorly I would say, “oops, bad throw.” After a few times saying that, Owen would say “bad throw, mom” every time he missed the ball.

After sufficiently wearing him out playing outside we went to make cookies and get dinner ready for the missionaries. He loves to help me in the kitchen. I cannot tell you how many times a day I get a red bar stool (pictured above) crammed in between me and whatever I happen to be doing. I am constantly in the way. At least he says “excuse me, mom” when he comes up trying to wedge himself between me and the apple I am slicing (for him).

When Olivia woke up we took a walk around our little neighborhood with our little red wagon. Olivia LOVED it. She really likes being outside. I walked backwards half the time, not just because it was a good work out for my rear end, but I kept looking at my cute kids together in the wagon.

We have recently potty-trained Owen, and that night at dinner, with a worried look in his eye he told me he needed to go to the bathroom. That worried look means he needs to go the dreaded number 2...he often asks for a pull-up, which is my first clue. I coached him through it (like any good mom does...because that is the job) and he came back to the table shouting his accomplishment from the rooftops (sorry elders...).

After the bedtime routine Nate and I snuggled on the couch together. Like I said, it was a very good day. And I write about it, not to paint a picture that everyday is like this, but because these are the kind of days I want to remember the most.

Torpedo Hands

This picture makes me smile. I just love it! I can’t stop giggling when I see my little man in his goggles. Owen started swimming lessons a few weeks ago and he is really enjoying it. Guess where I found my camera? In the swim bag. I put it there to remember to take pictures at swim class. And that is just what I did at his last lesson. I love watching him during his lessons. He was really nervous about it at first, but now he really loves it and gets such a sense of accomplishment from it. He can blow bubbles in the water, dunk himself (!) all the way under the water (while blowing bubbles), swim a short distance to his teacher, and will now let his teacher show him how to do the back float (that has been a deal breaker the past few lessons).  We are loving it.

Georgia Aquarium

Um...I don’t want to brag or anything but we have the worlds LARGEST aquarium here in Atlanta. So come and visit us! :) We took our kids last weekend for maybe the 3rd time. (it’s expensive). Our neighbor had generously given us some free tickets, so we couldn’t pass up on the opportunity! We snapped a few pictures of the kids. They had a great time. The best thing about free tickets? You don’t have to feel like you need to stay all day to get your money’s worth...we left after about 1.5 hours and it was just the right amount of time for the kids. There is a tank where you can touch stingrays and baby sharks. Owen wanted to touch them, but when they got close enough to touch, he just couldn’t bear to keep his hand in the water.

Richmond, Virginia

We took a little road trip to Richmond a few weeks ago. We had a great time. The drive wasn’t to bad and our kids did great. We visited with our friends the Thompson’s and the Bywater’s while we were there and it was so fun to catch up and to see everyone’s kids play so well together. We went to church on Sunday at the branch, which brought back a flood of memories! Sharon Udoh reached over my chair and promptly took Olivia from me and started snuggling her. It was funny. I can’t believe we’ve been gone for over 5 years! That’s nuts! Time really does fly, but with our friends in Richmond we can pick up where we left off. They are just like family. :)
The only pictures I have are from Sunday afternoon. We took a walk around Belle’s Island and let the kids throw rocks in the river. It was great! It is always so nice to get away, even just for a few days!

Olivia's 1st Birthday

How can it be possible that this little girl is one year old today? I can’t believe it! She has been such a delight and this has been one very fun year. For her birthday we had pink pancakes and she opened her presents. It was fun to see her enjoy it all and Owen had a great time helping her to blow out her candle and open her presents.
We tried giving her some cake later, but she wasn’t having it. She wouldn’t touch it, even when we tried to put it in her mouth, she wasn’t interested. Who’s daughter is this? We had a great time celebrating her first year and are just so grateful to have our sweet little Olivia in our family.

Talent

Had it not been for the birthday party we went to this weekend, we never would have known we have quite the potato sack racer on our hands. He’d never done it before, but just took off like a shot and won the race. It was hilarious! We are proud parents.

Zoo Day

We dig the zoo, so we went this past weekend and had a great time running around and seeing all the animals. We have another baby panda here in Atlanta, and apparently some really ugly birds...
We always go on the carousel and the train at the zoo, which is a funny experience. Both of my kids are somewhat “sensitive to movement”. I am not sure why, but neither of them enjoy being thrown around or upside down in all those fun ways most kids like. Owen especially is an I-like-to-keep-my-two-feet-on-the-ground kind of kid, so the carousel can be a bit intimidating to him, which is why he always chooses to sit on the peacock (see below). There are several animals to ride on, that move up and down as you go around, but only one seat that doesn’t. He picks that one every time.

Siblings

Owen and Olivia get along really well and love to make each other laugh. She is just now getting big enough where she’ll crawl over to him and (if he’s laying down) start playing with/jumping on him/grabbing his nose...all the while they are both laughing. I love it! He always wants to play steam roller with her...and I’m still not letting that happen just yet. She is more playful, but still a wee bit too small for steam roller.

Sunbeam

It is official, I have a Sunbeam. We have a primary kid in the house! Owen is thrilled with primary, his new teachers and new class. His first Sunday during sharing time they were talking about the Plan of Salvation (transitioning from “I am thankful for my hands” to the heavy stuff). The teacher was explaining where we go after we die, and Owen stopped her right there and asked “HOW do we die?”.  Off to a good start I’d say.
I just loved seeing him bound into the Relief Society room after our meetings on Sunday wearing his “I am a Child of God” crown...upside down. He insisted that the photo be taken on his new bike. He is my little Sunbeam.