Sedona!

Or as our cousin, Ian, calls it... Donut! We headed down south for a little warm up last weekend with cousins. It was a BEAUTIFUL day!

Amy and Ian. Check out Ian's pants... high waters on backwards, showing off his mismatch socks... yea for independent kids who dress themselves! :)

(Recognize the pants Mindy?!)

A fellow hiker we met on the trail. No one screamed even though he went right through the middle of us, Johnny and the girls on one side the parents and little boys on the other...

Leo loves his POCKETS! I think he looks so cute hanging out with his hands in his pockets.

Kyla, Mom, Ellie and Leo soaking in the SUN!

Ready for Adventure!

Backpack, check. Boots, check. Jammies... check.

13

"These are 13 YUMMY!" -Johnny

I will take that, especially considering he loves Lightning and doggie 15. Made my day, and the time I spent making them worth it!

PROJECTS!!

We have been making projects around here, Ky is my best painter! She got a little out of control here... SO CUTE! :)

We made the St. P's day "lucky" sign.

And an art board for Kyla's room.

Thanks to the help of my good friend, Melissa, I made this sign...

It's space was empty for... a year and then the plain black board hung there for another half a year... I knew what I wanted but not how to do it, FINALLY got it made and on the wall.

(THANKS MEL!)

Steve's busy work

I guess we have had some time on our hands... Steve got bored enough to come up with a project of his own. He installed two lights over our bed, each on their own dimmer switch. Goodbye lamps! Now what is Leo going to pull off the night stand and try really hard to break?! Steve hasn't got to painting the wall yet, I guess I should give him a day or two... :)

Growing Kidlets

When Ky moved back to her room I told her we would get a new growth chart, a girlie one. I wanted to get one at Hobby Lobby and since we don't have one in Flag I was waiting until we made a trip to Phoenix, we had a zoo trip planned that got canceled and now we have no set plans to go to Phoenix anytime soon... SO I made these! Of course we had to make a boy one too since Kyla's is so Girlie. I am glad I was forced to make them, they turned out much better than I imagined they would...

Johnny dude is growing fast! His board goes to 6' 5"... we are expecting tall boys! :)

The big sis is on the rise, Steve asks her daily if she grew in the night...

(Her red cheeks are from a day of skiing. Steve took her this week for her FIRST time, she LOVED it! I was a little nervous for her, I sent 2 changes of snow clothes in case she got cold and enough food for two days in case she was hungry... Glad she had a great time and wants to go again soon!)

I got the butterfly and train as plain wood and we painted them and added cute paper to decorate them, again, surprised they turned out, even better than the pre-made ones...

And Leo, he is growing too!

The marks on the wall are what is left of the old growth chart. I was going to paint the wall but when I pulled out the paint....

It was bone dry! The 1/4 inch that was left, dried sometime in the past 5 years... Surprise, surprise... The old marks will stay for now.

Yea, for new growth charts, now we can document how the kids are growing up too fast...

Brownies!

Leo LOVES chocolate!

I think it is awesome that the monkey on Leo's jams got brownie on his face too... :)!

The Queens of Hearts

And some Kings too...

We have started doing a little preschool once a week with two of Kyla's friends. This was our week and we did H for HEART!

Everyone picked up on Leo's good picture taking skills... CHEESE!

I had great plans for the snack for today but the spud-nuts (for donut Holes) didn't make it past mash potatoes and the brownies didn't make themselves... SO we had heart shaped toast and fruit, I put red sprinkles on the toast to make it more exciting. I thought it turned out pretty cute. Not quite up to par with our letter E cupcakes from our last time or the quiche one of the moms made for letter Q but the kids liked it.

And speaking of Valentines Day, Kyla and I made this felt rose heart a couple weeks ago to get us in the holiday spirit!

On the mantel...

HAPPY VALENTINES DAY everyone!! Hope you have a LOVELY day!

I LOVE TARGET!

The day has come... we planned on moving the boys into the same room as soon as Leo was "ready." Well Leo wasn't ready but I was. Kyla and John are together every day, all day, 24/7!! They love to play together and are the best of friends but sometimes they fight, shocking, I know... ;) I decided they needed a little space. Kyla got to move back into her "girlie" room and John got to move up to the top bunk. They both think it is VERY COOL! And Leo has two rooms now... he sleeps in his crib in Ky's room and gets dressed etc in his room with Johnny.

Oh and I moved ALL the toys out of their rooms, all the toys are downstairs in one spot, it is so much nicer!

Here is Kyla's "new" room... she loves it!!




She thought it was so great to be able to hang up her girl decorations again!!




The happy girl! And what is left of Leo's in the room...

The BOY'S room! I didn't realize how nice it would be to have ONE theme in the room again, it has been a boy room with a little girl mixed in for almost 2 years. It has kind of been like the paint in the master bathroom, I've been trying to convince myself it was OK for the past two years... I LOVE it now! Just another manifestation of my OCD... ;)

Hey look, more boy stuff! :)

Oh and the reason I love Target... I got all three new quilts for the kid's beds on clearance... 75% off!! And a few new pieces of wall art to match at 75% off too... YEAH!!! I was thinking I would have to talk one of our Grandmas into helping me make new quilts for the kids and although they would have been much nicer and more special had we gone that route, cute and cheap works for me too!

Bathroom Re-do... again...

So when Steve remodeled our bathroom we choose an AWFUL paint color! We agonized over the decision, had all our tile samples to try and match but it didn't work for us... at all! I still say Home Depot gave us the wrong paint, we're not great at choosing paint but we're not that bad...

Anyway, once it was on the wall we kept thinking it would look right once the tile was up or once the room was done.... it never did. But we couldn't bring ourselves to paint again, after all that, so for the next two years we tried to convince ourselves that we liked it... that didn't work. So FINALLY this year we re-painted. Since we stayed home for Christmas we had time to do some things around the house, this was one of them.

I loved how it turned out!! YEAH for a fresh coat of paint!

Chillaxin' with Leo

Leo LOVES this little chair! He has officially claimed it and if Ky or John sit in it you can hear his cries of "MINE! MINE!"

Here he is chilling in his monkey boots watching Cars, with his feet up...

SO FUNNY!

All decked out!

Not sure where the lamp was headed but it was ALL DRESSED UP for it! In case you couldn't guess, this is Kyla's work... :)

Sleeping Beauty

Kyla and Johnny spent an entire morning drawing pictures on the white board...

Kyla told me the story that goes along with the pictures they drew.

Sleeping Beauty had a friend dragon named Toothless. She went to find her dragon. She went to the kingdom and found the kingdom rejoicing because it was the Prince's birthday. The Prince's name was John. They rejoiced for about 50 days. When it was time for the party the prince opened a present, it was a dog. He always wanted a dog.



The Dragon was really surprised that the princess and the prince were dancing. Doggie was dressed up like a bee, he always wore funny costumes. When the sun came up they all rejoiced for the princess and the prince and they lived happily ever after.

As of January I now have TWO kids in primary! I was nervous about Johnny leaving nursery, he LOVES it and I didn't think he would like primary as well, sitting still isn't really his thing... He has done great though, the first day he just walked right in sat on the front row and has never looked back. I think the front row actually helps, he says he is winning the race because he is in the front... :)

Last Sunday I asked him about his sunbeam lesson, the conversation went something like this...

"Johnny what was your lesson about today?" -mom

"It was about the lion's den and... who was that guy?" -Johnny

"Daniel?"

"Yeah, yeah, yeah, Daniel. I was Daniel and the lions were roaring and then at the end the angel laughed."

"Oh, really? Cool. Who was the angel?"

"Um, the girl that I like that is in my class."

WHAT? Johnny is so used to being the little brother and playing with girls it is weird to think he has picked one out that he "likes" more than another...

There are three little girls in his class and we asked all three names but after Steve's teasing he wouldn't admit to liking any of them...

We even had one of them over for dinner that same day and Steve had to ask again if it was her but Johnny hid and wouldn't say anything until the subject had been changed.

It was really cute.

Johnny, our lady killer.

CHEESE!!

Johnny asked to take a picture yesterday, I said he could take three... I guess I'm glad he kept going... besides the 10 pics of my glue gun he took some funny ones of Leo. Leo is on a "cheese" kick again, whenever the camera comes out, he smiles like this and says "CHEESE!" It is one of his clearest words... to bad it doesn't mean he is hungry... it is purely for pictures.

Can't you just hear him saying it... "CHEESE!"

Ballet Ballet

Kyla started her ballet class this week! She has been so excited! She has been wearing a leotard, EVERYDAY for two weeks straight. We made a deal, she could wear it whenever she wanted if she would change when we left the house... she has kept her side of the deal. One morning I told her we were going out so she should get dressed in regular clothes, she thought about it a minute and came back with, "Can I wear it to breakfast and then I'll get dressed?" Great negotiating skills little miss!

On our way to ballet! It was everything she hoped for, she LOVED it!

When she was telling Steve about her class, she couldn't remember her teacher's name "It is like feather or something..." It is Heather... :)

This morning when she woke up, she told me she had been dreaming about ballet... I am happy she is so happy!

Grand Canyon

We made a weekend trip to the Grand Canyon. We haven't been for a couple years, it is one of those places that make parents of toddlers a little nervous...

Steve's sister Amy just moved to Flagstaff and we went with her and her family. It was a fun day, Ky asked if we could go back tomorrow...

Amy, Ian, Brad, Johnny, and Steve.

Johnny, Kyla and Ellie.





My BOYS!





This little guy was in one of the displays, not sure if he was meant to be there or not but all the kids thought it was COOL!




The Fam.

Our favorite, the desert view tower!

Phone Booth

The kids all love to talk to Steve on the phone, Leo even gets in on the action. The other day he brought me the phone and said, DA! We called Steve but he wasn't there so I let Leo talk for a minute, leaving a message. When I said it was time to hang up, Leo ran... This is him in his phone booth leaving an hour long message for Steve.

I bet it was an awesome message!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY GRANDMA SEAMONS!!! WE LOVE AND MISS YOU! HOPE YOU HAVE AN AWESOME DAY!