TWEET!

We made our return to the petting zoo at Thanksgiving Point yesterday after a few winter months of missing that wonderful place, and lucky for us, Tina came with us. (We've been missing her lately since she is now a busy, engaged person) A lot of farm yard fun was had by all. Anna was really excited to be reunited with her animal friends, and Max made some animal friends himself--animal noises are actually Max's specialty right now, so it wasn't too hard. You could hear him all over the farm yard shrieking "TWEET!"--that's our Max! Both kids fed the animals a few rocks, pebbles really. (sorry, I didn't have a quarter for the real duck food) and both Anna and Max rode the ponies. About riding the ponies--a worker helped hold Anna on her horse and at the end of the ride I told Anna to say thank you. She patted the pony and said "Thank you nice horsey!" so I told the worker thanks, and everyone felt appreciated, I hope.
It is really nice to play outside now that Anna and Max can both just walk themselves around--except for when they want to walk in different directions--so about always. I do have this monkey backpack/leash-in-disguise that used to work really well for Anna. So I tried it out for Max when we went to the temple dedication the other day since he is generally opposed to being carried around or riding in a stroller, or being contained or restrained in any other way, and he tolerated it for a while because he didn't know what I was doing with it at first (I tricked him). Since then, though, he's become a little wiser and if I start to clip it on he lays right down on the ground, no matter where we are. That boy loves his freedom!

Away

We went up to Idaho Falls this past weekend and left the kids with Taylor's parents --you know, just to get AWAY. I don't think I realized how much we needed to do that, until we did it. I have all these conflicting feelings about things like that--like all last week I was looking forward to it and thinking how nice it would be to just have a day where my schedule does not depend on or include all the daily jobs that come with being a mom, but then I always feel sad when it actually comes down to leaving Anna and Max. It think, though, that it is a very good feeling to miss them so much, because after just that short week, I am feeling very much more able to be patient with them and excited about all the little things we do together. It was also so wonderful to have Taylor all to myself (We said goodbye to his laptop when we left Lehi, Utah.) I am grateful to have a very hard working husband, but I am also grateful he knows how to take a vacation.
So while we were away, Taylor and I took a drive in search of cool pictures. Here are a few of my favorites.

Enough Hair Bows

There are some household items (like sippy cups, bobby pins, socks, pens, and hair bows) that cause me a little stress by mysteriously disappearing ---the other day I was thinking about how I never put bows in Anna's hair anymore and then I thought of our ONE little bright green bow that doesn't match anything--it is the last one left. So I went a little crazy--I found a free bow making website called Girly Things--PERFECT--and bought a LOT of ribbon and I have been happily making bows every night after bedtime. Last night after I deposited my creations in our newly dedicated Drawer of Bows, I felt like maybe I had gone a little overboard.

I had this whitish background hanging up in the art room for something else and this morning Anna went in and sat on it and said--"Take my picture mom!"--I thought this was quite a pose (above)--she came up with it on her own and held it for several seconds--long enough for me to grab the camera.

Kind of like the last post--here we are just hanging out at home.

Anna experiencing a little static electricity in our little IKEA tent. (which has earned a permanent place in our family room probably till the end of winter.)
Busy kids--they really don't stop very often.


I have been teaching art lessons at our house--something I've wanted to do for a long time. Here are some of my very talented students wearing their paper mache masks and my daughter who was knocking on her bedroom door last week during art class (also naptime) yelling "Hey, let me outta here!"

This little boy just wants to be big, and he is so busy working on it. He has a little stool that he carries all around and stands up on to reach things he's not supposed to (like lightswitches, salt shakers, important documents). He's also been really interested in clothes lately. If he sees my shoes he brings them to me to put on and when I was doing laundry last week, he kept handing me things and wanting me to put them on him--Anna's sweater, daddy's socks, etc. It's a little hard sometimes for me to get anything done with his agenda.



Anna is always trying to get Max to play games with her (like this game I think was called Night-night) And every once in a while he actually goes along with it.


I love this--Anna wearing her swim diaper on her head and her art apron.

A happy moment.
Sharing the rocking horse--which can be frustrating. Anna has a tendency to squeeze (in a not nice way) . I'm not sure in this picture if this was a nice squeeze or not. Either way, I think Max won't fall off, unless Anna does.