Life in February...yay, I'm catching up!

This month continued on with even more exhaustion, more house hunting, more offers on homes turned down, more paper work, ER visits for Mike, which has never happened since we have been together. It was tough for him. I felt so bad. The best part about this Month was my folks coming for a visit. They met us in Spokane and looked at several homes with us and ended up seeing the one we put an offer on and that we will be moving into. It was SO nice to have them here. This past holiday season we didn't do anything with my side of the family, no Canadian Thanksgiving, no American Thanksgiving, No Christmas or New Years and they were all together(yes everyone, even my brother and sister in law who live in Maryland were there), having fun. Playing games, making memories, hot tubbing and visiting. Needless to say I was feeling a bit lonely and so I was able to convince them to come down for a week. I have lots of pictures that may not be in order at all...

Its an almost everyday ritual to go to the gym and so my boys get into their rituals too, which includes hiding under the table at the entrance.  

Why not take a church selfie...why not?

My Mom is so funny, she came back from her favorite store Big Lots with these funny masks and so we took it easy and did them one night.

They are kinda scary eh!

We attended sweet little Remy's 4th B-day party, and that was lots of fun! It's always busy, but fun!

This bites its one of the only pics I have of all of them watching a show together b/c Mema's eyes are closed, but at least you get the idea...

Earlier in the Month, I was able to attend Vienna's Valentine's Party. Its always so fun to help out in her class!

This is Vienna's yellow table.

The weather has been really nice the past couple of weeks. YAY! We took Mema and Papa on a nice long walk while the kids rode on their 4 wheelers. Man they sure love those things. I'm so glad Santa brought them such great gifts this year! Thanks Santa!

Valentines Dinner wasn't near as thought out as normal considering we had just arrived from Spokane the night before very late, we put an offer on a home on Valentine's Day, despite that, we still had all the table settings, just not all the red and heart shaped foods. Oh well, there is always next year. Last year we had Grandma and Grandpa with us and this year we had Mema and Papa. Who could it be next year?

Vienna helping decorate the table even more.

Mema is helping us get all the Valentines stuff out, isn't she cute!

Papa, the love-bug, doing what he does best...reading a health book.

Our Valentine's Day spread!

It was yummy in our tummies and healthy too!

Because us adults aren't eating sugars, what a better way than to make an Easy Bake Valentines Cake!

Little did I know that it was a 2 layered cake with several steps and took quite a while, but the finished product was pretty impressive and much enjoyed by the kids.

Our V-day lanterns

This melted my little mom heart and she did it 100% on her own, in Free Time at school. This is a keeper for sure!

Here is the final product without decorations

Here is the cake decorated from left to right Everett, Vienna and Lincoln. They ate every bite!

This last group of pictures is so funny! This must be an American thing or simply a new thing b/c I have NEVER heard of it. At Vienna's school they had a huge celebration for the 100th day of school, where they did a whole bunch of 100 counting activities, asked them to dress like they were 100 years old. I love these kind of things and so I got into it. Peg and Alan came to the rescue and found us grey hair spray stuff and brought over some curlers of Grandma Grace's, necklaces and a vest too.

Here she is posing like she has no teeth...what a girl.

The best part though, was that she got to have Mema and Papa (her grandparents, who are much closer to 100 than I) to be at this celebration and hang out with her. She loved every minute of it.

Mema was in charge of the crown station!

Papa was in charge of the building a tower with 100 blocks station!

Here is her class dressed up

Here she is with the BEST teacher ever! We are going to miss her dearly. 

February was a whirlwind, but we made it and we got passed the inspection part of purchasing our home up there, so that means its ours unless financing gets tricky. 

We have 6 more weeks here in what I would consider the perfect home! 

5 bedrooms - all upstairs. simple but nice landscaping, a fenced yard, no neighbors in our face, a great neighborhood, a huge back yard, wonderful upgrades, a sliding door right out to the main level back yard, a beautiful porch cover, a hill in the back yard but with enough flat for a trampoline, windows that look out to the back yard for constant supervision, a pool and many other things. The only thing I will not miss is the slanted driveway. 

Needless to say, we are thrilled about this new business adventure! about the location, the people we are purchasing the practice from, being in a bigger city with much more to offer, being closer to Canada, big mountains and trees. We are excited to be in Noelle and Steve's ward, we like our new neighborhood, the school district and location to the office. We will miss Vienna and Lincoln's preschool, as they are wonderful. We will miss Vienna's great teacher, We will miss the few good friends we have but we are excited to explore a new place, meet new people, be in a new ward and make new friends. We have much change ahead, but change refines us and makes us better. 

Of course, last but not least, sweet little Owen Jack came into the world extremely quickly on Feb 26th. Now I have a niece and a nephew born on that day! Makes it easy to remember. lol. Lanae and Trevor's wedding anniversary is on Mike's B-day, my bro in law Steve and my Grandma have the same B-day and my sister Shelby may have the same anniversary as me...thanks for keeping it easy family! Too bad I won't get to see him until he is 4 months old :(

On that note, I will sign out. This week is Spirit week at Viennas school. Monday was "There's a Wocket in My Pocket" so wear lots of pockets. Tuesday was Pajama Day and wear your Cat in the Hat, Hat. Today was "Wacky Wednesday" so wacky outfit and hair. Tomorrow is "Fox in Sox" day, she gets to wear wacky socks and Friday is, "One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish" so you wear something blue and red. I'm sad to say I havent taken any pictures at all...mom fail. Oh well. 

Life in January, posted on March first...

Let me take a minute to explain why I am just now posting about January. To say there has been an enormous amount going on in our lives is an undertatement. We are going through the process of purchasing a dental practice in spokane, purchasing a home there, selling our home here, maintaining life and routine for us and our kiddos, and if that's not Mike was in the ER twice in 1 week a few weeks ago and missed 4 days of work. We are trying to get our vintage motor home ready for the season and well more, but too much to go into. So I feel ok posting so late. It might be this way for a while.

Here is the junior primary singing, boy arent the cute!

This was on my birthday, my kids sang Happy B-day to me. So sweet!

I love these earrings my good buddy Aarika sent me for my special day!

We have started packing, which also means de-junking and the kids really loved all the CD's we let them enjoy before we chucked them all.

There was one day my boys got really into their dinosaurs, Everett still loves to have Blue Baby (the little blue guy) at bed and Lincoln loves Green Baby, a little green stegasaurus. They even watched dinotrux after this with their dinos and would lift up the one that matched on the screen. So sweet!

Playdoh is still always so fun to play with. We love the dental set Everett got for his B-day from Peg and Alan, everyone dreams of having rainbow teeth, according to Dr. Vienna. Lincoln uses it all the time. the drill even spins. So fun!

We love playdoh!

Our journey to Spokane the first time to begin our house hunt, turned out to be difficult and frustrating but to spare details lets just say, once we finally got to swim it was well worth it. 

This sign was on our hotel...not sure what it means, but it made me happy. I'm so thrilled to be living closer to mountains, in pinetrees and closer to the border. YAY!

My sweet sentimental Lincoln still has a tough time saying goodbye at preschool, even though he loves it, and because I am serving in the primary presidency I am in there with him for sharing time and singing time and he is like a little puppy, if I'm not conducting or teaching he wants me to be right beside him. If I wasn't there I don't think he would have an issue. Anyway, I tool this Lincoln selfie b/c he actually allowed us to convince him to wear a tie. There are definitely some OCD characteristics in our sweet, soon to be 4 year old. 

We love you Lincoln.

Our Darling Baby Boy Everett, turned 2!!!

Well this adorable little (well quite big) bundle is growing up. We decided very last minute to celebrate at a little kids arcade in Richland. (Thanks for the recommendation Tiki) It was perfect! It even had mini bowling. It was fun to have the kids and their cousins play games and win prizes. I'm glad we did it, even though we hummed and hawed for a while. 

The arcade had a bit of everything and luckily even Everett could do some things. 

The big air hockey was quite a blast especially because Mommy got a mini one for Christmas from Vienna.

This special little Birthday boy even got his own sign.

So the kid bowling was actually a blast. I strongly recommend it! All ages could do it, even Everett...barely.

Lincoln was loving it!

Well everyone was, all the cousins.

We had fun with the cake, we bought a few mini ones because, lets be honest, kids don't really like cake.

He got a whole mini one. He didn't need it but had fun making a mess of it!

Trying to get this little man to pose for a big boy birthday shot was tricky, but this one is pretty darn cute!

We have been pretty close buddies the past few months (he is really into his mommy)

Opening gifts was fun for him and he had good practice at Christmas, so he knew what to do. He got some really fun things from everyone.

This is the set up they made for us, they even asked what colors we wanted...I went BSU!

Linc's like the gun games, not that great of aim but that doesn't matter at all.

So here is the up and up on our little 2 year old. 

He loves to color, play with trucks, cars, trains and lining them all up.

He doesn't really like any fruit. sad. sometimes frozen blueberries, pineapple and watermelon.

He likes peas in ichiban and roasted carrots but otherwise he isnt a great veggie eater either.

He does well with Macaroni, greek yogurt, apple sauce squeezies and eggs. Otherwise it is a hit or miss.

Being outside is always a great place for him.

He really is my only child that will just go off and play on his own for quite some time. Its so nice.

He still says Uh-huh and now he is saying "NO" with a hand up. 

As soon as he turned 2 he has decided to potty train himself, which is definitely not awesome, when you're not ready. Arg! I'm trying to embrace it, I promise.

He is really into whoopie cushions, its so adorable. Just making them do "stinkys" over and over

He loves his "blue baby dinosaur" 

In fact at stores, church and the play area at the gym, he is really into real babies and its so sweet.

Physically he has this funny spot right in the front of his hairline that just won't grow hair (as you can see)

He currently has molescum all over his torso, they are bad like Vienna's were, but hopefully they will go as quickly as hers did. 

He loves baths, watching a show in Mom and Dad's bed and playing tag with his brother and sister. 

We sure have loved these past two years with the little guy and cant wait for more!!!

WE LOVE YOU EVERETT OTTO!