My Grandma

My grandma passed away at the beginning of March. We will really miss her. Some of my memories of my grandma...

My grandma was a great cook. I will always remember her yummy pancakes. This is weird but I will always remember every breakfast, we would have two cups, one for milk and a little one for juice. She always made popcorn whenever we were visiting her, my favorite was the red kind, I don't know what is was but it was my favorite. I will have to ask my mom how it is made. I will always remember the funny metal chair that we would fight over who got to sit in at the table. She had a great garden and I had fun walking through it and looking at all the plants and vegetables with her and my mom.

My grandma's house was a old farm house literally in the middle of nowhere. There were no neighbors within view of the house. We loved to walk up to the pond by the house. I loved to play on the old wood swings in their yard and climb on the huge tire they had. They had these huge trees that had a tree house in them, but I never did play in it. My brothers would tell me that I was too little and it was too dangerous for me to climb up there. I enjoyed spending summer afternoons out on the lawn talking with my cousins.

Home Sweet Home!

Those words have never sounded so good! I can't tell you how excited we are to have finally found a house. Let's just say that it has been a long time coming. We had been looking at houses for almost 6 months. We had probably 10 offers in on short sales and foreclosed properties that we weren't getting any feedback on. So when we found this house we really moved fast.

We looked at it on a Friday night, we had our accepted offer on Saturday afternoon and then we closed 10 days after that. It was pretty quick. We were getting ready to move in the day after we closed on our loan and the "lovely" (to say it nicely) mortgage company ran out of money and they couldn't fund our loan. So we had to wait a couple more days for them to come up with the money and we were finally able to move in. I guess looking back it wasn't so bad, but we were really disappointed and frustrated and worried that something would fall through and we wouldn't get the house. But everything turned out fine and we are so excited to be in our home.

It is a 3000 sq ft rambler with 3 bedrooms and 2 baths on the main floor with an unfinished basement. It is pretty much what we have always wanted in a home. Mark is really excited to finish the basement and I love that I have a storage room and lots more storage/closets on the main floor. I even have empty cupboards in my kitchen. We will have to put in a yard again, but we are already planning it out and excited to work in the yard this summer.

I'll have to post more pictures as we get more settled.

Way late... but here's what we did in February

We have just been going non-stop lately. So it might take me a little while to get caught up.

We got a new toy. Mark has really wanted a little four wheeler for our boys, although I think Mark and I have had more fun on them. We bought one and so did my parents. So while we were still living in Mapleton, we would race them around the backyard.

Little Ryder is becoming not so little anymore. He started crawling just a few days after Valentine's Day. And I don't think he has stopped since. He also decided that he doesn't like to sleep anymore. It has probably been almost a month without a full nights sleep, ranging from waking up every hour to sometimes just once a night. We are really trying to get him back to his normal sleeping habits, but it is taking a lot of work.

I bought this little hat and scarf at the Chocolate Extravaganza. It is a fundraiser for the Newborn ICU at Utah Valley Regional Medical Center. My mom and I have gone the last couple years and I love to go. They have great food and lots of good chocolate. And since 2 out of 3 of my boys and spent some time in the NICU I love to go and see our nurses and support them.

Mark gave the boys haircuts one day while I was at work, but he didn't do Ryder's. So a couple days later I told him we should just trim his long baby hair. So I get the scissors and we start cutting, but they weren't really sharp. So as I am going toi get different scissors, Mark busts out the buzzers and my little baby is no longer here. It always makes me sad to cut their hair for the first time. But they look so cute after. Ryder was not happy with daddy for buzzing his cute hair.

Paxton just keeps getting busier and busier. It seems like I clean up one thing and he already has dumped out the next box. I was really hoping that we wouldn't have to put locks on our cupboard at our new house but I think I was hoping for too much.

The new house... I think I will do a seperate post for that. It was quite the adventure!

Our Valentine's Day

Ahhh! Relaxation! That is all I can say. Mark and I had a really fun Valentine's day this year, a few days early because that is when we could get a babysitter. I booked us a couple's massage and it was really good. I have never felt so good before. I just might have to make this a regular occurance. We went out to dinner afterwards. It was such a good night of relaxation and lots of good conversation. And being away from the kids didn't hurt. I love you honey!

The boys had tons of fun at their Valentine's parties. And I think their little Valentine's boxes are so dang cute. I don't know how people come up with such cute ideas.

No Snow 5k

Last weekend Mark and I did a 5k at UVU, although it ended up not really being a 5k it was a little short. We think it was really almost 2 miles. It was pretty fun though, we got to run crazy through the halls of UVU! Mark ran it in 14:something and I was at 17:something. I can't remember exactly. I have never really been into running but I have fun doing it. I hope that I will get faster as I run more! (Sorry the picture is so small, we took it with Mark's phone)

My Boys

I have to admit that I have some of the cutest little boys ever. Here are a few things that have happened lately.

Here is Ryder posing for the camera. He is really moving now and almost crawling. He gets up on his hands and knees and will do one or two little crawls, but then resorts back to his army crawl.


And here is Conner doing almost the same pose, when he was Ryder's age. This is not the best picture, but he is so cute in it! I really see a lot of Conner in Ryder.

Mark took this picture while I was working the other day. He thought it was really cute that Paxton put his arm around Ryder.

Mark tends the boys while I work a couple nights each week during tax season. I thought I would give doing taxes a try this year. We'll see how it goes. But I have to say, Mark has been so good with the boys. He has lots of fun playing with them when I am not around, at least I think he does! And he even cleans the house. I don't know how he does it. I think maybe he is trying to show me that I should be able to multitask and clean the house and take care of the boys at the same time.

January Updates

This year is already flying by for us. When will time slow down?

Both Conner and Paxton had their check up the end of this month. Conner weighed 43 lbs (50% I think) and was 47 inches tall (97%) Paxton weigh 26 lbs (25%) and 33 1/2 inches tall (75%) on the Down syndrome chart. I have to go back in and have Paxton's yearly CBC and also a series of x-rays done on his neck to check for instability.

Ryder has learned that it is fun to move around. He has started to army crawl all over the place. The beginning of last week he started rocking back and forth on his hands and knees and really trying to move, and just a few days later he really started going. It is fun to watch him and his determination to get to what he wants. Sometimes his little legs push him too much and he does a face plant but he just keeps going. I guess I am really going to have to start watching him now!

On Saturday Mark was watching the boys, while I was at work, and they were watching Survivorman. Well the guy was on a island and was eating coconuts, lizards and grasshoppers. Conner thought that it was WAY COOL! So they made "Lizard and Grasshopper Noodles" for dinner. Then on Monday for Family Home Evening this week we had a coconut for our treat.

My boys also helped Grandma make cookies and this is the result of Paxton with chocolate frosting.

Paxton is completely "graduated" from Kids Who Count. We have had so much fun with them, at playgroup and having the therapists come into our home. Here are some of Pax's favorite people!

Mary, our OT, she has been coming since Paxton got home from the hospital, he was 5 weeks old.

Melanie did our playgroup and also came to our house to work with Paxton on lots of different stuff.

Donna, Speech

Kim, PT